Under Over World brings together four gifted and restless improvisers – Austrian, New York-based vocal artist-pianist (and sound artist, and experimental theater maker) Luisa Muhr, New York reed legend Daniel Carter (who hosts Muhr in his PlayField free improvising collective), Costa Rican, New York-based double bass player (and photographer, who took the suggestive cover photo that corresponds with the album’s title) Kenneth Jimenez, and Austrian drummer Alfred Vogel (who runs the Boomslang label, which released Muhr’s debut solo album, Teuflin/She-Devil in 2024). The free improvised meeting of this ad-hoc quartet was recorded during Vogel’s visit to New York in 2025.

Muhr’s free-associative and dramatic stream of wordless vocalizations set the course of the six pieces, but there is no telling where this quartet is heading. She sets an emotional vibe that sounds familiar and engaging, but with no literal dictionaries or guides. Carter sings with her, in his own genre-defying language, on the saxophone, trumpet, flute, and clarinet (and piano in one piece). Jimenez is also an imaginative storyteller, and his fluid phrasing carries a quiet intensity. Vogel frames these improvisations as living, breathing organisms, sculpting fluid architectures that embrace freedom and chaos.

When Muhr plays the piano on «When You Just Sit Down and Do it», the quartet sounds like a free jazz outfit, energetic and spiritual. Muhr, Carter, Jimenez, and Vogel have established their own language and cohesive sound, sketching unpredictable, often theatrical, sometimes sensual, and always playful stories, with many eccentric characters and wild adventures, true to the name and spirit of the second piece, «No Spiral Is Just Vertical». You feel the spontaneous, stimulating magic of the art of the moment that can and should enrich further journeys of this quartet.

Eyal Hareuveni

Luisa Muhr (vocals, piano), Daniel Carter (reeds, piano), Kenneth Jimenez (double bass), Alfred Vogel (drums)