They have worked with Tonny Kluften since 1998, as the core of improvising ensemble No Spaghetti Edition and in the quartet HISS with British keyboardist Pat Thomas. The HISS CD from 2003, ”Zahir”, shows the group's intense, listening application of the strategies of so-called free improvisation.The group's multi-instrumentalism means that this is no conventional guitar-bass-drums trio. On acoustic and electric guitar as well as banjo, Grydeland mixes finger-picking technique with various types of bow, as well as acoustic and electronic devices. Tonny Kluften on double bass uses various bows, sticks and rubber bands, while Zach produces a wide range of sounds on drum kit - but with all players indulging in idiosyncratic devices, it's almost impossible to know who's producing what unusual or bizarre sound. It's striking also how they take the marvellous polyrhythmic approach pioneered by Ornette Coleman on "Lonely Woman" several steps further. On the album we hear Zach's locomotive groove gradually contrasted with the free tempo of plangent, folk-like acoustic guitar, in a kind of fractured descendent of the railroad blues - or alternatively, the drums setting up a tight but furious high-tempo groove, with the other instruments either at a slower tempo, or out of tempo completely, while the banjo's traditional or trad-jazz associations make a bizarre and intriguing contrast. When the group lower the energy levels, plangent arpeggios on acoustic guitar are heard against percussive objects and a lone, rather erratic bass drum - these effects are spare, haunting and quite beautiful.