The power of three: what rock-loving types call a "power trio," i.e., Cream, Jimi Hendrix Experience/Band of Gypsies, the guitar/bass/drums setup - a triumvirate; jazz lovers hold the "piano trio" in high regard but I don't recall the term "guitar trio." All this quaint rambling leads us, Dear Readers, into a slice of Raw Meet, the recorded meeting of three diverse heavyweights. Elliott Sharp, whose musical paths include notated ("classical") composition (think I. Xennakis, Morton Feldman), blues, free improvisation and thorny, dissonant rock; Melvin Gibbs, who's played with R. Shannon Jackson, Marisa Monte, Defunkt and the Rollins Band; Lance Carter, beat 'n' rhythm man for Robert Musso, Bill Laswell, Maroon & the late great Sonny Sharrock - these cats have joined together for some feverish and delightfully fractured improvisations. "Sonny's Way" is a scorching, inspired tribute to both Sharrock (who was among the first, if not THE first, to transfer the approaches of Coltrane, Sanders and Ayler to the guitar) and Hendrix. "Alamort" features slippery, ethereal Sharp (echoes of Robert Fripp and Fred Frith sustain here) weaving through a maze of spacious, rippling bass and brittle, questing, thunderclaps-in-the-distance drums. "Santa Sangre" would be great for a film soundtrack for scenes of eerie desolation and post-apocalyptic entropy (but without such a visual element, it rambles/meanders a wee bit at times), and "Frog & Toe" is Ozzy-era Black Sabbath meets Delta bluesman Son House with a mean hangover. Not for the timid, RM is harrowing, freaky but mostly focused free improv with disquieting overtones of nightmarish rock & blues guitar madness and pointed, funk-charged rhythms, a mutant offspring of blues-rock and free jazz that been lurking under the basement stairs.