Alto saxophonist Tim Berne's gritty, tough sound and next-level compositions are featured on four ECM releases including the brand new one, Incidentals. The music is characteristically action-packed in the Berne tradition: powerful, dynamic, often fast moving—yet also very clear in all its teeming detail. Snakeoil demonstrates Berne's rare ability to channel rigorous structure while still breathing the rarefied air of freedom in his playing. Snakeoil is drummer Ches Smith (Mary Halvorson, Craig Taborn), clarinetist Oscar Noriega (Anthony Braxton, Chris Speed), and pianist Matt Mitchell (Dave Douglas, John Hollenbeck). These meticulous craftsmen and artful improvisers take music far beyond the written page and into an expressive, magical sonic territory of exhilarating textural shifts, modular grooves, and serpentine, brain-twisting melodies.