Collaboration LP that builds a virtual free-playing orchestra from the combined line-ups of three excellent UK underground groups, Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides, The Hunter Gracchus and Chora. Far from a dopey free-for-all, the recording has an elegance and a sense of restraint that's often missing from your average low-rent polyphonic jam, with each group preserving their own unique identities while unequivocally contributing to the overall heft of the sonics. The dosed flute and drum style of Part Wild Horses provide some of the record's highlights, with their dark, mutant Cherry/Blackwell-isms propelled even higher by waves of clean, modal guitar straight out of the Mick Flower/Richard Bishop school of elevating electricity. And while there are certainly 'moments' where the specter of Vibracathedral Orchestra and NNCK is unmistakable, Le Drapeau Noir's music is something else entirely, drawing on UK free music modes, Eurasian ritual music, folk and psych forms in order to articulate precisely where English underground music is at circa now. A great record from one of the most consistently interesting UK 'scenes'. - David Keenan