“Dans les arbres” is both band name and album title of this first release from a Norwegian/French collective that has been pooling energies since 2004, while also drawing on longer-established associations. The release marks the ECM debut of guitarist Ivar Grydeland and clarinettist Xavier Charles. Percussionist Ingar Zach has contributed to projects with Jon Balke (Magnetic North’s “Diverted Travels” and “Statements” by the Batagraf group), while Christian Wallumrød, of course, has been an ECM recording artist for 12 years already, with four albums as a leader for the label, most recently “The Zoo Is Far”, which was issued in 2007. If the benevolent inspiration of John Cage was felt already on Wallumrød’s “A Year from Easter” (2003) whose titled referenced Cage’s “A Year from Monday”, there are musical-temperamental affinities also on “Dans les Arbres”. Cage had his prepared piano... and Ivar Grydeland has his prepared banjo, whose patient metallic pulse is one of the anchoring sounds here. Rather like Cage or Morton Feldman and other indeterminate music-makers, these improvisers also seem determined to ‘let sounds be sounds’, setting the timbres and textures free, or exploring them in detail, at times with an almost scientific detachment. Theirs is a music of small revelations rather than larger gestures, with arresting sound combinations constantly emerging. Occasionally, with sruti box and clarinet establishing thick drones, it sounds more like Eastern ritual music than Western improvised music. In other moments this strictly acoustic music sounds remarkably electronic.