NORTH Londoner Binker Golding’s early love for music had a somewhat serendipitous beginning. “I was initially interested in playing guitar but it was forbidden by my parents because of its association with rock music which I was, and am, heavily into,” the north Londoner tells me.

“At the local music school they only had space for a saxophone or violin student. So I chose saxophone out of a process of elimination.”

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The tenor saxophonist, composer and conductor’s first and continuing jazz influences remain John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker, Michael Brecker and Joe Henderson and certainly echoes of these masters pulsate from his horn.

And his sonic dialogue with another great Parker — Evan — is a formidable feature of his album Journey to the Mountain of Forever with drummer compadre Moses Boyd.

Golding exemplifies the jazz spirit, as Duke Ellington put it, of being “beyond category” and he rejects the constraints of pigeonholing: “I’d simply say there are a number of styles of playing that I admire. I’ve tried to get as many of them down as possible and project my musical self into them. I see them all as closely related, like different sides of a dice.”

His latest album, the exploratory and free-spirited Ex Nihilo (Out of Nothing), is a collaboration with Rochester-born pianist Elliot Galvin, who Golding calls a “hugely creative” player. “There’s no limit to where things can, and will, go when playing with him.

“We listen to a lot of the same music outside of jazz and that’s informed our playing together and understanding of each other.”

Very unusually, and somewhat provocatively, all the titles are in Latin. “We’re both language enthusiasts and reasonably fluent in reading and speaking Latin, Golding explains, “so we thought that it would be fun to do. We both also love Sanskrit.”

The languages of jazz and the ancients on Ex Nihilo is an amalgam of free improvisation from riveting and profoundly novel sounds. “The record label ByrdOut gave us the freedom to do whatever we wanted, so we took the opportunity to do something more musically specific than what a more commercial label would’ve been after,” Golding explains.

On opener Aeturnam Vale (Goodbye Forever), the farewell is an ironic greeting, with Binker wailing and groaning his valediction while Galvin’s teeming, tapping percussive keys become a pianistic drum set.

Eram Quod Es, Eris Quod Sum (I was what you are, you will be what I am), as the title suggests, is sheer sonic empathy in action. Golding’s horn paints an aural sunrise over Galvin’s softly rumbling and chinking undertone. These are sounds from another planet – Sun Ra would have loved them.

Galvin’s keys make bells on Ad Usum Proprium (For your own use), while Golding’s continuing, repeated ascents then cadences of timbre create a quasi-Celtic, elemental soundscape.

His intention in forging this extraordinary duo album “was to create interesting music that we felt was honest. The only thing that really satisfies me is getting a piece of work done and getting it at least reasonably close to what I had envisaged when I started out.

“I consider anything from 75 per cent and up to be acceptable. Anything less than that and I start again.”

A MOBO award-winner with Boyd, Golding is a true sonic discoverer and he is absolutely one to watch out for wherever he journeys in future.