Nine-piece experimental acoustic ensemble Zeitkratzker make themselves up to 10 thanks to a guest appearance from Elliott Sharp who adds saxophone, electric guitar, and “conduction” (presumably as a musical conductor rather than an electrical one). It’s a seamless addition to a comfortable, established ensemble combining piano, strings, doublebass, bassclarinet, brass and guitar into an arrangement that’s avantgarde in performance but traditional in construction.

Driven by a score which was initially conventional before it was processed and mangled in Photoshop, of all places, this is an impulsive bit of chaotic improvisation. The many players come and go in a variety of combinations, many of them bordering on cacophonous, as though the only real instructions being provided are controls over speed and discipline. Everything else has a raw attitude symptomatic of the ‘waking dream’ theme.

“Oneirika” is one 47-minute piece, divided into ten parts. Mostly this division is for convenience rather than any musical distinction, with some exceptions- part 4, for example, starts off from a steady kick drum rhythm before developing out of it. Heavy slightly oompah brass in part 6 evokes images of a circus performance going dark, while the rumbling escalating tension in part 8 is reminiscent of a György Ligeti work.

Despite being a live performance the recording quality is excellent, and it could certainly be mistaken for a studio album. Besides the exemplary recording quality though, it feels like an ensemble performance that, ironically for the ‘avantgarde’ label, could have been recorded at any time in the last fifty years. It’s a work with an impressive scale, but one that somehow no longer challenges.