on’t worry too much if you haven’t heard of Thomas Ankersmit before this review – he hasn’t given you much to go by. When it comes to recorded material, the Berlin-based improviser and sound artist’s name appears with truly unfortunate scarcity – only this EP and a lone track on Toshimaru Nakamura’s recent Meeting at Off-Site compilation testify to Ankersmit’s existence. The lack of proper audio documentation, however, is by no means the product of a sloppy work ethic, as a beyond-extensive resume of live performances can attest. In recent years, Ankersmit has offered up his saxophone contortions and electronic blips in collaboration with such top-shelf improvisers as Jim O’Rourke, Axel Dorner, Taku Sugimoto, and as a member of one particularly blistering trio with radio manipulator Gert-Jan Prins and Kevin Drumm – not to mention his installation pieces or his appearances with electroacoustic pioneers Takehisa Kosugi and Alvin Lucier. Perhaps it is forgivable that a man this busy hasn’t found much time to press “record” lately.

If this brilliantly focused debut EP is any indication of Ankersmit’s future efforts on record, he should most certainly pencil in some more studio time. Like Ankersmit himself, the EP’s slipcase reveals precious little information. No indication appears as to the record’s means and methods beyond the now-customary listing of name, instrument, and email address. Even the seemingly self-explanatory “Alto saxophone” that graces the back cover gives only the slightest indication as to how Ankersmit channeled four pieces of such densely layered and overtone-saturated sax squall from one horn. Overdubbing? The countless strata of multiphonics and the breathless streams of noise-without-beginning-or-end seem to say yes, but the razor-sharp responsiveness of each reed-biting twitch and twirl present an effective counterargument. Recorded in real time? Probable enough, as long as you subscribe to the notion that the duration and ferocity of Ankersmit’s reed assault is the product of some sort of bionic lung machine capable of infinite gale-force winds. The EP is stunning either way, and the decision to leave the techniques involved in its creation leave the listener with no pesky preconceptions or technical hang-ups. The noise stands alone – what you hear is what you get.

What Ankersmit has wrought is not for the faint of heart; it’s a surgical evisceration of the saxophone as musical instrument, an experiment for the bold only. Ankersmit takes the fiercest howls from Albert Ayler and the most complex textures from John Butcher and reconfigures them as raw material instead of accent, creating a jagged canvas on which to toss splatters of squeals and wavering drones. Hints of Evan Parker’s endless circular breathing tactics emerge, but the trappings of Parker’s busy fingerwork have been replaced by a single-minded stream of wildly overblown multiphonics bearing more resemblance to a Mego-style noise implosion than any conventional improv gesture. Indeed, electronic metaphor fits Ankersmit’s laser-beam saxophone best – it sounds someone dumped all those “gentle” sine waves in Sachiko M’s sampler for some seriously ear-shredding sawtooth waveforms.

There’s no room for development or structure in Ankersmit’s universe of raw texture, nor is there any real need when the sound alone is so staggering. Ankersmit tears into the room’s resonant acoustics with a hail of buzzsaw-inflected harmonics and ruthlessly chases down every fleeing frequency before rattling it within in an each of its life. A close-pitched haze of reed-bitten grit scours the upper ranges of hearing throughout, while slow-moving low register drones drenched in a deep, throaty vibrato provide near-polyphonic counterpoint to Ankersmit’s swarm of mechanical wasps. Details emerge amidst the chaos – a shift in timbre from sharp and silvery to wire-brush bristly, a tongue slap marking a sudden change in register, an unexpected change in density. As such, the din becomes more than one-faceted exercise in brutalism and enters into the realm of methodical examination, a frenzied pursuit of the last squealing gasps left undetected deep within the saxophone’s brass guts. When Ankersmit – or perhaps his horn – can sustain the energy required for such high-test exploration no longer, the drone cuts off in a final echoing shudder into which an eager and anxious silence rushes.

On this first EP, Ankersmit takes only sixteen recorded minutes to succeed where countless improvisers have failed in wringing out new and memorable textures from the increasingly tired confines of the alto saxophone. It’s an amazingly intense affair and positively wired with innovation and energy from start to finish; if it were any longer, it would be nearly too exhausting to listen. Thus, this first effort acts as both a stunning piece on its own and as a promise for fine things to come. If Ankersmit can work such wonders with the saxophone, imagine what he could do with his electronics – or with both his acoustic and electronic endeavors in tandem. Here’s hoping someone gets a microphone around Ankersmit again – and soon.