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Levs on CD

Bassist Kim Cass is among a vanguard group of Brooklyn-based improvisors who are creating works at the leading-edge of rhythmic acuity. Levs, his debut with Pi Recordings, features pianist Matt Mitchell and drummer Tyshawn Sorey, who called Cass "a singular composer and player: the man can do things that doesn't seem possible on the bass, displaying a technical command of the instrument on the level of the most celebrated virtuosic performers in any genre of music."

The compositions on Levs are deeply idiosyncratic, built on stilts of complex, polyrhythmic structures over a sea of harmonic murkiness. Cass plays with a precision - often combining with the piano as a unified voice - that seems beyond the instrument's technical limitations. Sorey's structured improvisations on the drums alternately reinforces and disrupts. It might project a façade of free improvisation, but exists as the direct result of intense, energetic coordination. Levs is volatile yet dreamlike, and imbued with a sense of ominous mystery.