Bonnie Wright's new label, Henceforth Records is off to a good start with a couple of thrilling releases.

"Baggerboot" features a trio of two musicians from Wuppertal, Germany - violinist and viola player Gunda Gottschalk and accordion player Ute Völker - along with Belgian bassist Peter Jacquemyn [who is also a member of the famous WIM]. Unusual choice of instrumentation for a jazz improvisation ensemble, but then again, this is not really jazz. It somehow straddles the boundaries and moves freely between improvisation and new music. In fact, new music is the moniker I would stick on the trio. Many of the recent work by members of the trio can be heard on various releases on Free Elephant label, which incidentally is run by Gottschalk. From a musical perspective, the trio doesn't really probe any new frontiers. This sort of comprovised [partially composed and mostly improvised music] has been done numerous times before. What's interesting here is all three players are truly interested in the texture of the sounds. How will the sounds appear as Gottschalk scrapes a mean pattern across her violin, while accordionist Völker weaves waves of chaotic noise, all the while Jacquemyn pounds his bass into submission with brutal force. Most interesting passage comes in "Cascade III", where a moody, drone passage is introduced. Highly energetic, the sounds are weaved in a fashion that makes the sum of the parts more interesting than individual ingredients.