This sprawling double live album is the second of two Intakt releases from Tim Berne’s Snakeoil in 2020 (following up The Fantastic Mrs. 10). The first four tracks are from a Firehouse 12 concert in 2017; the next four document Brooklyn performances at IBeam and Roulette, in 2010 and 2009 respectively, some years before the quartet’s three-album run began on ECM. The concept is fairly consistent across the years, the pieces long and highly complex. The Snakeoil lineup (Berne on alto sax with clarinetist/bass clarinetist Oscar Noriega, pianist Matt Mitchell and drummer/percussionist Ches Smith) comes through every time with an impressive show of technical rigour and raw improvisational heat. The Snakeoil gig is either a pianist’s dream or nightmare: Mitchell will sometimes double Noriega’s intricate parts in the left hand and Berne’s wholly different patterns and phrases in the right hand. It’s Berne’s compositional language through and through, with difficult interlocking themes, dancing polyrhythmic shifts and ragged yet unforgivingly precise counterpoint, often coming to a fiery head at the end of a piece. But amid all the density, there are elements of calm and dynamic subtlety—the opening of “Spare/Cittá” for example—as well as textural richness provided by Smith’s vibes, glockenspiel and other percussive tools beyond the drum set.