Kieran Hebden And Steve Reid - 'Tongues' (Domino) Released 19/03/07

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Heard it all before? Sampled every imaginable genre and variations thereof? Chances are you've never encountered anything quite like 'Tongues', the new collaboration between electro experimentalist Kieran "Four Tet" Hebden and champion drummer Steve Reid, whose CV spans a mind-boggling array of talent (Miles Davis, Sun Ra, James Brown, Fela Kuti, the Motown studio band, to name just a few). We've been hereabouts before, on the two 'Exchange Session' improv albums the duo put out last year. This time, however, there's no sign of the meandering moments spent in hesitating limbo, waiting for the two musos to click into a groove, which sabotaged those otherwise exhilarating releases.

'Tongues' gets straight to the point, with flab-free and frequently mind-blowing results, which often come across surprisingly accessible, considering the groundbreaking nature of Hebden and Reid's freeform electro-jazz exercises. The earth-trembling beats bombardment of 'Brains', for example, sounds like a hit in waiting, a boast you certainly couldn't make of the extended workouts that comprise the twosome's earlier output, whilst the sizzling opener 'Sun Never Sets' is downright melodic, at least until the demented bouts of cling-clang-clatter cacophony from Hebden's laptop laboratory break out, adding a disorientating dollop of avant-garde to the hypnotic funk.

Throughout the proceedings, hints of Krautrock's metronomic pulses, the cosmic caterwauling of 70's space jazz and the free jazz-hued abstractions familiar from Four Tet's 'Everything Ecstatic' LP pop up, but the copyright of this fresh, ever-evolving sounds belongs to Hebden and Reid alone. Or at least it's hard to locate obvious predecessors for the jaw-dropping likes of 'People Be Happy', which marries Reid's pummeling bass drum punishment to a joyous series of squeals and bleeps reminiscent of a vintage video game character bouncing off a trampoline. The rehash of the traditional 'Greensleeves', meanwhile, reduces the familiar melody to a haunting music box tinkling that could be the sound of a flock of electronic birdies chirping on some pixel-ed powerline. All of which highlights Hebden's awe-inspiringly imaginative prowess with manipulating, twisting and reshaping sound from various sources, but the real star of the show is the consistently stunning Reid, who anchors Hebden's raids at the outer reaches of electronic experimentation with a surefooted tightness and sparingly administered virtuoso displays of his dexterous jazz chops.

It's not quite perfect. The album plays its trump cards early, with the platter's latter parts struggling to match the strike rate of the first half. Whilst Hebden and Reid's single-take policy ensures spontaneous freshness and lack of stifling polish, the no-overdubs rule sometimes translates into tracks that resemble works-in-progress, hugely promising sketches of ideas yet to reach their full potential. But these shortcomings are a small price to pay for a record that dares to beat its own uncompromisingly innovative path.