Subterranean - New Designs on Bowie's Berlin

Daring, very daring. Jazz and rock seldom meet on equal terms, so the drummer deserves all the credit for these imaginative reworkings of the Thin White Duke’s most enigmatic period. When the musicians embark on the occasional straightahead sequence, the pieces risk becoming homogenised, but otherwise there’s not a trace of fusion bombast in these sotto voce improvisations. When the arrangements stay true to the spirit of Eno and Bowie’s fog-bound originals, they surpass them, the wash of synths and saxophone sketching a ghostly new landscape.