Cellist Erik Friedlander has covered multiple geographies in his career, scoring creatively with his more klezmer-colored explorations. The quartet he leads here, however, is altogether different, creating a rubbery chamber music feel through the electric bass of Stomu Takeishi and the percussion of Satoshi Takeishi, which leans away from traditional kit drumming and toward the finer punctuations of hand-hit drums. Adding the polished alto sax of Andy Laster, the group tacks cleanly with pointed rhythmic lines, a mostly bowed cello that sings across the top, and the sax entwined in the stringy, woodsy tonal spread. Never one to abandon the jazz repertoire, Friedlander selects a trio of jazz curve balls near the end of Topaz, beginning with Miles Davis"s mid-1960s adventure piece, "Tout de Suite" (which held clues to the trumpeter"s oncoming submersion in electric avant jazz-funk), and continuing with a thrilling, bass-busy take on Eric Dolphy"s "Hat and Beard" (a paean to Thelonious Monk) and then a delicate reading of Dolphy"s loveliest tune, "Something Sweet, Something Tender." The mix of a deeply woodsy cello and the other well-drawn tone colors and textures here is wonderful. --Andrew Bartlett