Anthony Braxton's Zim Septet
Cafe Oto, London

OUT of his breath comes such complexity and profundity of three-quarters of a century of musical sound, whether on alto sax, sopranino or contra bass clarinet.

This is Chicago-born Anthony Braxton who, after his military service, became part of the Association of the Advancement of Creative Musicians.

He made his recording debut in 1966 and has never stopped innovating ever since, even writing his musical titles as diagrams and notations as squiggling shapes.

At Cafe Oto he's accompanied by the Zim Septet, an extraordinary amalgam of musicians — Taylor Ho Bynum on cornet and flugelhorn, Dan Peck on tuba, violinist Jean Cook, accordionist Adam Matlock and harpists Jacqueline Kerrod and Miriam Overlach.

Braxton plays breathy alto and conducts with finger signals, while Bynum scales the skies with his torrid flugelhorn and then his cornet rasps high and low with rampant excitation.

The astonishing palaver between the fierce avalanche of tuba notes and the occasional quasi-Parisian timbre of Matlock's accordion produce an uncanny union as the harps create an orchestra of endless strings alongside the guttural brass. The percussion is forged by the harpists striking their strings with hollow wooden rods as Bynum kicks his mutes around the Cafe Oto stone floor.

Strange, though, how music connects and flows through life. After the gig, as I walk to the station, a lone busking alto saxophonist plays a passionately forlorn version of Sly Mongoose over the deserted Ridley Road Market, echoing through the night.

It could have been Braxton, for it is his life song too.