The New York Times – Love In Outer Space – Giovanni Russonello

Ms. Davis and Mr. Taborn are two pianists with an ear for stark clarity and unflinching abstraction. Each is the kind of player whose presence is reason enough to go see a gig: They can hold an entire band together, then throw its bone structure apart with a flick of the wrist. On Friday they released “Octopus,”a collection of duets recorded on tour in 2016. The pair ventures often into free improvisations: playfully dyspeptic, scattered, opaque. But on “Love in Outer Space” — a Sun Ra classic that Mr. Taborn keeps in regular circulation with his quartet — the six-beat, Middle Eastern plod grows only more hypnotic over the course of the nearly eight-minute performance. Toward the end, a high note starts tolling in a rusty chime; that’s Ms. Davis’s piano, prepared with a bit of metal clipped to a high B-flat string, rattling like a beacon or a tin heartbeat. G.R.