All compositions by Georg Gräwe (GEMA), Barre Phillips (SACEM/GEMA), and Peter van Bergen (BUMA/STEMRA) except for # 2 (Gräwe/Phillips), # 6 (Peter van Bergen), and # 10 (Gräwe/van Bergen)
Recorded on June 28, 1999 @ Blue Wave Studios, Vancouver, British Columbia
Mastered in Cleveland, Ohio, on February 21, 2000 @ the Cleveland Institute of Music
Recording engineer: Perry Barrett
Mastering engineer: Alan Bise (Acoustic Digital, Inc.)
Producer: Russell Summers
Layout: Russell Summers
Photos: Laurence Svirchev
Front Cover Art: Gerhard Richter ©, Abstraktes Bild 1993, Oil on canvas, 56 x 61 cm
Rear Cover Art: Gerhard Richter ©, Abstraktes Bild 1995, Oil on canvas, 51 x 56cm
© 2000 nuscope recordings, Dallas, TX (USA)

Excerpt from the booklet
There are several intellectual strands in the current discussion about improvised music that need to be offset with a healthy dose of hedonism. The first is an asceticism that seems to be promoted by prolonged exposures to live music while seated on folding chairs, overheated or chilled, depending upon the season. The second is an overwrought historical reflex that immediately places a recording in a museum case upon release. Last, but not least, there is the expert class´ repeated suggestions that immersions in Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and others are required to make sense of the gig.

The simple point in all the talk about semiotics and deconstruction is the primacy of pleasure in improvised music, both in its making and its partaking. Despite the best efforts of the most disciplined frontal cerebral cortex, inspired improvised music triggers a surge of endorphins through the body just as surely as the most lascivious juke joint live and the most exquisitely rendered Bach. That´s the reason musicians and listeners alike are smiling at the end of the set or the disc, not the collective realization that improvised music´s dialectical ladder has spontaneously sprung another rung.

A good flow of endorphins attended the making of this recording. All three musicians were in town for the 1999 edition of the ´du Maurier international Jazz Festival Vancouver´ . In addition to leading his ensemble ´Loos´, Peter van Bergen had already teamed up with Georg Gräwe for a vigorous quartet performance at the fabled Western Front with William Parker and Susie Ibarra. Barre Phillips was touring with Biggi Vinkeloe, but had become a semi-ubiquitous presence through a duo concert with Vinny Golia, and a trio concert with Paul Plimley and Mark Feldman. Yet, despite their proximity, their first and only opportunity for the three to play together was this recording. (…)

Georg Gräwe, Barre Phillips, and Peter van Bergen are hip to something that too often escapes even the most passionate, erudite supporters of improvised music: relaxation. Therein lies the key to the pleasures of their improvised music.

Bill Shoemaker, March 2000