Cinc & John Russell, Café Oto, London

Cinc are an open improvisation trio whose performances evolve with the organic logic of an animated discussion between intimates. All three understand the idiom’s psychology and pitfalls and have deep roots in improvised music – Ken Vandermark on reeds in Chicago free jazz, drummer Paul Lytton and violinist Philipp Wachsmann in European improv. Armed with a wide palette of individual quirks, orthodox mastery and fine-tuned fluency, they instinctively know when to compliment and when to argue.

The opening flutters and synchronised slurs in the first set were in such close accord that it was hard to believe they were created spontaneously. Vandermark’s dry-toned clarinet alternated oblique rapid-fire runs with full-register smears, both mirrored exactly by Wachsmann’s violin and Lytton’s rattle and pop drumming. It evolved into harmony as plangent violin soared over reedy sustained clarinet and a collage of rattles, scrapes and random collisions from percussion.

Each musician is a virtuoso of the idiosyncratic. Vandermark splits notes to the extreme and adds the loudest and most percussive dead-toned plop I have ever heard from a low register saxophone. Periodically, he would repeat single notes rhythmically, doctoring each one with an overtone, smear or microtonal movement. Wachsmann’s preference is a mix of modernist melancholy and a shimmering loop of plucked violin strings that sounded like a transcendental harp. And Lytton periodically loads his minimalist drum kit with everyday objects that rattle and whirr – an egg whisk and a bag of dried peas among many.

Guitarist John Russell joined for the second set, his mix of acoustic warmth, odd fingerings and plucks an immediately complimentary voice. At times he brought to mind a frantic zither player and his scraped strings were a truly unsettling contrast. And though the set didn’t quite achieve the intensity of the first, each variation had a new and fascinating twist.

The finale began with Vandermark’s remarkable, gonglike tenor sax tones, modulated into a rare bout of full-force improv, finally collapsing into a sustained breath of malevolence from Vandermark’s sax swirling under precise, whisper-quiet creaks from Russell’s guitar.

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