Tim Berne Alte Saxophone Matt Mitchell Piano oscar noriega Bass Clarinet, Bb Clarinet Ches Smith Drums and Percussion CD 1 Recorded live by Nick Lloyd at Firehouse 12, NY, on Dec 1, 2017 CD 2 Recorded live by Joseph Branciforte at IBEAM, NY, on June 15, 2010 and at Roulette, NY, on November 21, 2009. Tim Berne's Snakeoil, this group that has grown into a conspired unit over many years, presents with The Deceptive 4 an extraordinary live double album. "This double-disc live document, The Deceptive 4, traces the evolution of both Berne?s writing for Snakeoil and the way the band interprets his compositions onstage ? from the group?s nascent beginnings to not long before the recording of its most recent studio release, and first for Intakt, The Fantastic Mrs. 10 (Intakt CD 340). Disc 1 presents a Snakeoil concert recorded in 2017 within the studio-like acoustics of Firehouse 12 in New Haven, Connecticut. Disc 2 combines music from the foursome?s second and third shows ever, before Berne had even settled on a firm name for the band. The first three tracks on the second disc were recorded in 2010 at the intimate I Beam space in Brooklyn, New York, with the fourth track ? an homage to Berne?s key mentor, saxophonist-composer Julius Hemphill ? taped in 2009 at the theatre Roulette, also in Brooklyn. The quartet music captured on The Deceptive 4 flows from sinuous lyricism to expressionistic fierceness and back again like sonic quick - silver, the players utterly attuned to each other and the questing, even head-spinning dynamism of the material? writes Bradley Bambarger in the liner notes.