Fred Anderson / DKV Trio

The DKV Trio (drummer Hamid Drake, bassist Kent Kessler, saxophonist Ken Vandermark) formed in 1994 and found a home at Fred Anderson’s bar/performance space, the Velvet Lounge. In 1996, they all made this album together. Vandermark (heard in the left channel) is an excitable youngster, filling every space with squalls and roars; Anderson (heard in the right channel) wrote all six tunes and honors the sonorous, bluesy melodies more, but he’s not holding back either. And given that he’d been playing with Drake since the ’70s, this was much more of an evenly matched encounter based on mutual respect than youngsters kneeling at the feet of an old master.