British drummer-percussionist Mark Sanders played all the great free improvisers in the local, fertile scene – Evan Parker, Elton Dean, Paul Dunmall, Howard Riley, Frode Gjerstad, Pat Thomas and Thurston Moore. CollapseUncollapse: Time in Images is Sanders’s debut as an improvisational lead, with bassist-electronics player Chris Mapp (who has played with Sanders’ in Dunmall bands) and keyboards-electronics player Andrew Woodhead, recorded at Sansom Studios in Birmingham in May and June 2021.

CollapseUncollapse: Time in Images features three trio pieces and two solo pieces by Sanders. The trio pieces introduce aesthetics of post-rock and post-fusion to the muscular and powerful, dense free jazz-tinged improvisations, with the electronics of Mapp and Woodhead. But Sanders is the obvious leader who sets the massive pulse and alternates it with more sparse but ritualist, sound-oriented short searches and experiments, as demonstrated in the opening, 18-minute «Gravelines».  The shorter «Bridged» takes this intense, genre-bending dynamics to unsettling cinematic terrains while the title piece offers a hypnotic-ritualist beat ornamented by the subtle but nervous electronics of Mapp and Woodhead.

The two solo pieces of Sanders are also unconventional and cement the elusive CollapseUncollapse spirit of the album. He suggests an enigmatic and ambient, psychedelic, and resonant soundscape on «Eclipsed» with a wise playing of gongs and cymbals. The last «Ghost Dance» deepens this kind of mysterious, ritual in a manner that brings to mind the metal drones of Sunn O))).

Eyal Hareuveni 

Mark Sanders (drums, percussion), Chris Mapp (bass, electronics), Andrew Woodhead (keyboards, electronics)