snobb Kate Gentile is New York-based drummer who already played with Anthony Braxton, John Zorn and more important - Tony Malaby,Kris Davis,Matt Mitchell and Chris Speed, among others. "Mannequins" is her surprisingly mature studio debut leading a quartet playing her compositions.

Tim Berne's pianist Matt Mitchell is probably best known of quartet members (he's doubles on Prophet 6 synthesizer and electronics here).Two other members are acoustic bassist Adam Hopkins and tenor/clarinetist Jeremy Viner.

Being a classic jazz quartet by line-up, Gentle's band plays far not so classic jazz though. Complex,mostly groove-less and swing-less songs by their aesthetics fit well somewhere between contemporary classical music and (non-jazz) avant-garde, that's improvisation and soloing what gives this music the right to be classified as "jazz".

Comparing with other modern days recording of similar genre (starting from some Tim Berne works to "New York new avant-garde jazz" to same Matt Mitchell solo works), Gentle's music sounds cooler,better controlled and more ... calculated. Fortunately, there are lot of internal emotions in playing and cold surface always hides internal tension and energy.

Surprisingly enough, "Mannequins" sound quite similar to post-rock - just played by very technical jazz musicians converting genre's simplicity to modern jazz complexity but leaving post-rock "static" atmosphere and rational calculated sound.

Excellent album for everyone with open ears and interested in most current creative jazz.