Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio & Jeb Bishop - The Flame Alphabet (2013)

Remember free-bop? While there's no hard and fast definition, the term was used to encompass jazz boasting a written head, often at rapid bebop tempo, which subsequently opened up harmonically and rhythmically, but without straying completely off the map. Think some of the freewheeling Blue Note discs of Sam Rivers and Andrew Hill or some of the roller coaster charts from reedman Anthony Braxton's classic quartet with trumpeter Kenny Wheeler. As a descriptor it also fits the output of the Transatlantic grouping of trombonist Jeb Bishop and Portuguese saxophonist Rodrigo Amado's Motion Trio, but with a twist as the foursome dispense with anything other than purely extemporized themes.