The first album from the Mercury Quartet is a set of nine breathtaking ‘live compositions’. Moving from searing, brutal noise to elegant lyricism with startling agility, the group improvisations of these four musicians are utterly unique.

The broad range of influences that can be traced in their music give the album a fantastic breadth of mood and energy but do not take it into the realms of messy eclecticism. Traces of twentieth century masters such as Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Messiaen, and Ligeti are set intelligently against a sense of freedom and musical dialogue inherited from improvisers such as Cecil Taylor Ornette Coleman, and Evan Parker.

The repertoire the Mercury Quartet have grown up on and played every day in their careers as performing musicians has informed their rich vocabulary, and they sing out a music that points a very positive direction for contemporary music in the next decade.
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