Dave Lisik: Rail 16 (Rattle)

The prolific Lisik (see here) offers this new and complex single suite which exists somewhere between improvised music, art music and a long tone poem (more like a tone short story) which has an over-arching, if sometimes aurally elusive concept, the kidnapping of American aviation hero Charles Lindberg's son in 1932.

With an ensemble of classical and jazz musicians including saxophonists Adam Page and Tim Hopkins, pianist Jian Liu and cellist Martin Risley, the 49-minute piece shifts moods through melancholy, unease, pathos and drama.

It doesn't sound like anything Lisik has done previously. Then again, nothing Lisik fashions ever does.

Here there is an unsettling intimacy and even if the bones of the story weren't outlined in the cover notes, you'd feel something wasn't quite right with the world.

Another in Lisik's impressive, indefinable and ever-growing catalogue.

Next up, an album with a big Sydney jazz ensemble.

Of course.

Like the sound of this? Then try this.