If you have read Splendid even once in the last seventeen years, there is a 97.5 percent chance that you have come across a review of the music of one Mr. Ernesto Diaz-Infante. Add The First Time to the mix and we're up to 97.9 percent.

Somehow, despite his more-than-prolific output and his proclivity for music of an instrumental and improvised nature, Diaz-Infante's projects are engaging and inspired more often than not. This is partly because he's a terrific musician, but the fact that he's constantly joining up with new groups of people and stretching out his musical muscles also has a lot to do with it.

This time out, it's The Diaz-Infante & Harman Duo (Diaz-Infante on piano and prepared acoustic guitar, Pat Harman on electric bass), teamed up with NYC's avant-jazz improvisers W.O.O. Revelator (Bonnie Kane on sax, flute and electronics, Chris Forsyth on electric guitar and Ray Sage on drums and percussion.) The First Time has nine tracks, each featuring some combination of players from the two groups (duos, trios, everyone.).

The music is mellower than I thought it would be, and is much closer to new music pointillism than it is to jazz wailing. That's good from a detailed listening perspective, as there's no lack of strange little riffs and sudden chords and lovely quiet moments and momentary funky beats. It does, however, mean that the music here tends to drift into the background if you're not paying close attention, as all of those little details have to work hard to hold on to your ears in the absence of easy-to-grasp large scale form or up-front riffs.

The recording quality is not particularly great on some of the tracks, and there are occasional problems with balance and distortion. However, since it seems that The First Time is intended more as the record of an interesting musical collaboration than a polished, packaged product, the quality of the recording isn't really a problem. The energy, talent and creativity of these fine players comes through just fine.