For many, free improvisation is like a country where they have spent an hour in the railway station and hurried away without seeing anything they find attractive or comprehensible. But, like so many travelling experiences, an hour in a station where the coffee was cold and the service surly tells you little about a country. Free improvisation is a country that is continuously developing and, inevitably, the success of its development depends on the skill and sensitivity of the musicians involved.

Dominic Lash and Bruno Guastalla have recorded an album that clearly demonstrates such skill. Grazing shows what can be created by two musicians who have great technical expertise and understand each other's sensibilities within the larger landscape of free improvisation. Both are experienced in playing music in which there is no preordained sequence of events or any strict way in which an instrument should be played. Lash (double bass) and Guastalla (cello) form, in classical terms, a string duo but within the country of free improvisation these roles are malleable.

Grazing contains a series of wonderfully intimate conversations covering a wide variety of subjects in which both players tease and extol tones and arguments from their instruments, and yet both also use conventional techniques when the moment requires. Within the subtlety of the conversation, Lash is not afraid to play a continuo line on bass and Guastalla uses the bow to briefly bring out a full vibrato. This is free improvisation that looks into the future without losing sight of the journey taken and is a long way from the coffee in the station caf.

Guastalla and Lash launched this album at the Jacqueline du Pr Music Building on Tuesday with guest Philip Wachsmann (violin/electronics). Further details from Bruno: brunoguastella@yahoo.com or call 07713 056202.