Amsterdam has been a magnet for improvisers since the 1960s, and that tradition is alive and well today in bands like Ambush Party. Appropriately in this most musically international of cities, the band is made up of a Brazilian, an Argentinean, a Norwegian and a Dutchman, all of whom have a level of involvement with the influential Doek collective. As should always be the case with genuine free improv, there is great collective listening at work as pianist Oscar Jan Hoogland, saxophonist Natalio Sued, cellist Harald Austbø and drummer Marcos Baggiani set about their very liberated approach to all idioms and sonic extremities, playfully embracing ECM romanticism, pop whimsy and free jazz volatility. The lines between sincerity of purpose and self-parody become blurred, in a quintessentially Dutch way, and links Ambush Party back to the old masters like Williem Breuker and Misha Mengelberg.