Oh hell yes.

Allow me to explain -- last week a friend and I discussed the general kick-assness of Thrill Jockey and how they're one of the last few labels dedicated to furthering genuine fucking progression in music today. A cursory glance at the roster turns up some of the most legendary names in experimental music from the last two decades -- Boredoms, Tortoise, Chicago Underground. Add Exploding Star Orchestra to that list. Last year's We Are All From Somewhere Else was a highly enjoyable romp through jazz history, as much Sun Ra's Arkestra as it was Mahavishnu Orchestra, pulled off with lead-member Rob Mazurek's own idiosyncratic flair. A year later, and they've got another album that records their ferocious descent upon the Chicago Jazz Festival, this time teaming up for three tracks (two compositions) with old-guard free jazz guru Bill Dixon. But if last time was a wild-yet-palatable melodic excursion into how jazz could remain accessible-yet-progressive in 2007, this time sees the band leaping headfirst into the demanding madness of Dixon's freestyle.

I feel like it's hard, for us children of the info-age, raised with access to everything and the nihilistic sense that "it's all been done" -- to identify with how damned scary experimental jazz must have sounded to the shave-and-a-haircut set circa 1960. If Bird and Dizzy were too much for them to handle -- and make no mistake, they were -- they must have had no idea what to do with the likes of Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Cecil Taylor. Free jazz was (and remains) some of the most truly abstract music ever to have constituted a movement and (I don't want to push this conjecture too far, but bear with me) its impact was such that jazz never truly recovered. Witness Wynton Marsalis sputtering about how Taylor's music isn't jazz in Ken Burns' strangely essentialist PBS documentary: it was forty years later, and the music still scared the pants off him. All the same, I feel that it's similarly difficult for those who have been sent running by free jazz's willful atonality, barely-structured mayhem, and freer-than-free-verse disregard for any concept of what music is supposed to be, to appreciate how this sort of thing can be soothing, spiritual, and tasteful, when it wants to be. Dixon and Exploding Star Orchestra manage to straddle both these sides with aplomb, passion, and -- dare I say it -- decorum on this live document.

Want scary? Want power? The entire band roars out with a cataclysmic righteousness rivaling anything in heavy metal at the 2:20 mark of "Constellations for Innerlight Projections," leaping from a delightfully low-key, retro-psych poetry reading into a violent cacophony with all their cannons firing (a move that reminded me of parts in Coleman's Science Fiction). Want something soothing and spacey? Skip to the 10:30 mark, where the band nearly deconstructs itself out of existence, becoming the sound of the afterglow after the star has gone supernova. Want the sweet in-the-pocket rhythmic propulsion that characterized so much of We Are All From Somewhere Else? Check either version of Dixon's "Entrances," where Dixon and Mazurek duel wildly over a rubbery, willful rhythmic backbone, all the while fighting off challenges from guitars, clarinets, and piano. Want class? Notice how much restraint this crew exercises, no one player ever seeking to dominate the ensemble (and yet, Dixon remaining out in front the entire time), the compositions always balancing their explosions of mayhem and disintegrations into chaos with more structured, melodic segues and lucid examples of just how chilled-out free jazz can be.

I can't say that I follow the current free jazz scene with the closest of ears, but that said, this is the most compelling, exciting recording in the genre I've heard in recent years, and that's owing to something other than the skill and tact of the players. Listen deeper than the intimidating sound of so much improvisation and you'll hear a genuine sense of joy: the wild abandon and virtuosic fun that these musicians are having with one another. This sort of thing contains, I suppose, its own built-in caveats -- if you don't like free jazz on principal, then you won't like this. If you do, however, you should be clicking the "buy" button right now. And if you're willing to be open-minded about it, you just might find yourself enjoying a record that's far more experimental than the vast majority of the instrumental horde, and far more pleasing than most experimental music. Highly recommended.

-Lucas Kane