Ribbit, Ribbit, Ribbit

Paradoxical Frog has become a band to contend with. After the trio’s rather jawdropping performance at June’s Vision Festival, they’re on a big roll. Grace, drama, delirium, effervescence, and texture. Texture for sure. Pianist Kris Davis, saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and drummer Tyshawn Sorey are putting a spin on the usual calibrations an improvising trio employs. Together, these expert soundscapists breed the kind of outcat poetics that electrifies a room. The chemistry of filtering forceful dissonance, negative space, expressionist blare, keen abstraction, and random skronkery through a three-way prism is chancy indeed, but the Frog has a firm grip on roiling exposition. Their Vision Fest set I was celebrating above is streaming for a few days on the BBC. Don’t delay, it goes away in a bit.