Atonal and fragile from start to finish, Karyobin tells the aural story of "the imaginary birds said to live in paradise." Indeed, there is much bird song here; also much pecking at the ground, flitting from branch to fence, and plenty of mysterious conversation. In fact, the album bears a certain resemblance to Dave Holland's much later "Conference of the Birds," though this recording is quite a bit less structured than that one. It would seem that this early work with the SME was very inspirational for him. The group is heard here in an early incarnation (their first recording was in 1966), and at a time when the SME represented some of the most advanced free jazz of the time. There is a feeling of the Cagean "kitchen sink, bedpan and bicycle wheel" approach which was the M.O. of Parker, Braxton, and the AACM at the time, but they manage to pull it off without the kitchen sink. The fact that they are able to extract such a diversity of sounds from the instrumentation of a classic pianoless quintet is nothing short of amazing (...) - Scot Hacker
