Ignaz Schick is one such wonderer. The German polymath’s own involvement with electronic sound was preceded by a youthful immersion in free jazz, and if you catch him in Berlin, where he now lives, he’s likely to bring an alto saxophone to a gig alongside his turntables and sampler. But Now Is Forever isn’t the product of wondering, but of action. In 2017 Schick took a break from a residency in Los Angeles to fly into Minneapolis for a couple of days, which he spent playing with Douglas Ewart. Ewart is a multi-instrumentalist, poet, sculptor and mask and instrument maker who grew up in Jamaica, then moved to Chicago as a teen, where he fell in with the AACM. He rose from being a student in the association’s school to being its chairman for a spell, and his integration of jazz sonorities, Afro-Caribbean rhythms and ceremonial staging carries on traditions initiated by the Art Ensemble in the 1960s.

While their encounter only lasted two days, there’s nothing rushed about the performances spread across Now Is Forever. Schick layers and ruptures classical piano recordings, orchestral surges, captured mechanical sounds and vinyl crackle into a seething, constantly changing backdrop. Ewart likewise moves between woodwinds, percussion and stern proclamations. His saxophone forays are like lightning rods, drawing and concentrating the powers flowing around him. His recitations direct the energy back outwards, projecting scorn towards phonies and environmental despoilers in general, Trump in particular, and the wasteful plasticity of contemporary living. He doesn’t just condemn, though; “Bamboo Paradise” suggests the titular plant as a sustainable alternative material against a backdrop of East Asian (maybe Vietnamese?) string samples. Spread across two CDs, the album is a journey, sometimes demanding, sometimes edifying, but ultimately asserting the viability of more encounters like this one.