Featuring New York based virtuoso artists Greg Tardy, Abraham Burton, James Hurt and Antoine Drye, drummer legend Rashied Ali selected a perfect set of tunes for his new downtown band. The selections are compositions by Ali, Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter and Jaco Pastorius as well as songs by the members of the band. "This is definitely all my thing" Ali said in an interview in early August 2009 before he passed away. "I heard these guys at Smalls, we played a few gigs and I really liked the sound." This group finds its rhythmic foundation in the jazz tradition, but feature a strong avant-garde and free jazz approach in the improvisations. Rashied Ali is a master of firing energy into an uptempo saxophone and drum duo, originally developed by John Coltrane, whose band Ali played in until Coltrane's death in 1967. "Coltrane gave me this sound, and although my playing was about the free direction already before, he was the one who gave the confidence in what I was doing." No wonder, on this album Rashied Ali passes on that confidence to his sidemen, who have no shortage of imagination on the path which Ali started with his peers in the 1960s.