"The Tarfala Glacier at the foot of Sweden's highest mountain Kebnekaise is melting at alarming speed. Put it down to global warming, but I like to think that some of the heat generated 600 miles further south in the city of Västeräs in 2006 is also to blame. These for mighty slabs of Improv featuring Mats Gustafsson, Barry Guy and Raymond Strid, will all but melt your speaker cones.

In recent years Gustafsson has moved further into the territory of Fire Music, but any comparisons between this line-up and The Thing, his power trio with Ingebrigt Häker and Paal Nissen-Love, can stop at the instrumentation - with Guy on board, there's no question of reworking free jazz or rock standards, and there's only the slightest hint of slamming beat from Strid, right at the end of the final "Porphyr" - and yet the intensity level is just as high. Gustafsson's tenor screeches on "Tarfala" and baritone bellows on "Icefall" would give Frank Wright and Arthur Doyle a run for their money, but he's also a remarkably sensitive player, as revealed by the delicate pitch play of "Taku", in which Guy reveals more of the lyrical side he explored on 2006's Aurora with Agusti Fernandez and Ramon Lopez. Elsewhere, you would swear that the bassist has six hands. Strid too: his sense of propulsion and ear for detail throughout are quite remarkable. This was one of these gigs where everything went right and it deserves to be around as long as the glacier it takes its name from." Dan Warburton, THE WIRE (May 2008)

BARRY GUY (Bass)

Barry Guy is an innovative bass player and composer whose creative diversity in the fields of jazz improvisation, chamber and orchestral performance and solo recitals is the outcome both of an unusually varied training and a zest for experimentation, underpinned by a dedication to the double bass and the ideal of musical communication.

He is founder and Artistic Director of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra and the BGNO (Barry Guy New Orchestra) for which he has written several extended works. His concert works for chamber orchestras, chamber groups and soloists have been widely performed and his skilful and inventive writing has resulted in an exceptional series of compositions.

Barry Guy continues to give solo recitals throughout Europe as well as continuing associations with colleagues involved in improvised, baroque and contemporary music. His current regular ensembles are the Homburger/Guy duo, the Parker/Guy duo, piano trios with Marilyn Crispell and Paul Lytton, Jaques Demierre and Lucas Niggli and a recently formed trio with Agusti Fernandez and Ramon Lopez. He continues the longstanding trio with Evan Parker and Paul Lytton as well as projects with Mats Gustafsson.

MATS GUSTAFSSON (Saxophones)

Born in Umeå, Northern Sweden in 1964, Gustafsson has performed thousands of concerts both solo and in small and large ensembles in Europe, North America and Asia, playing the full suite of saxophones as well as his own invention the fluteophone and the 'weevil sax' crammed full of power electronics and heard to great effect on his recent Dancing Wayang LP 'NEEDS!'.

Gustafsson has played with Peter Brötzmann, Sonic Youth, Merzbow, Jim O'Rourke, Barry Guy, Otomo Yoshihide, Yoshimi and many more alongside his regular working groups The Thing, Sonore, FIRE!, Gush, Boots Brown, Swedish Azz and Nash Kontroll.

"Gustafsson, the nu-new thing superstar sounds like a DNA spliced offspring of Evan Parker and Peter Brötzmann. He can play the quietest breath key taps where listeners lean forward in their seats to hear to the full metal blasts of Brötzmann's Machine Gun-violence." Mark Corroto, All About Jazz

"one of the world's most original and exhilarating saxophonists" Barry Witherden, BBC Music Magazine on 'Tarfala'

RAYMOND STRID (Drums/Percussion)

Raymond Strid started to play the drums relatively late. As he had become addicted to listening to music, sometimes spending eight ours a day in front of the stereo, he was encouraged to start playing himself (and to this day, he is still a dedicated listener and audiophile). With no musical background he thought the drums would be the easiest instrument to learn. He was particularly inspired by some of the European master drummers like Han Bennink, Paul Lytton and Tony Oxley.

Strid's first concert was 30 September 1977 and he subsequently performed in a variety of local groups in Stockholm. In 1988 he formed the Swedish trio GUSH together with Mats Gustafsson and Sten Sandell. From that point work has also included a wide number of groupings and projects such as Guy/Gustafsson/Strid, Crispell/Jormin/ Strid and the free jazz trio LSB (Fredrik Ljungkvist and Johan Berthling). The Electrics (Axel Dörner, Sture Ericson and Ingebrigt Flaten) was formed in 2000 and that same year he became a member of the Barry Guy New Orchestra. Strid has been touring and participating at major improvisation festivals in Europe and North America. He also considers that, since around 2005, his playing moves stylistically between free improvisation and free jazz, sometimes mixing the two. Raymond Strid also teaches improvisation, methods and aesthetics.

"Swedish percussionist Raymond Strid has, in recent years, become an important member of the improvising community, working with, among others, Barry Guy, Roger Turner, Evan Parker, John Butcher, Mats Gustafsson, Sten Sandell and Marilyn Crispell. The most notable aspect of his playing is an ability to clarify the essence of the music as it develops, creating a sense of space with great subtlety within the most complex of settings, often holding back where another might blur the details. These qualities are also evident in his playing when he substitutes his drum kit for "table percussion" and amplified and processed instruments and objects; for example, on the album Gushwachs with Gustafsson, Sandell and Philipp Wachsmann." Rubberneck

Tarfala information on the Maya website