Live at the Village Vanguard is surely the most pungent of album titles, promising top-tier New York musicians and an environment that brings out the best in their playing. Such icons of 20th-century jazz as John Coltrane and Bill Evans made some of their most revolutionary musical statements at the famous Greenwich Village basement, so you couldn't exactly call the booking policy conservative. Still, iconoclastic ex-Tom Waits guitarist Marc Ribot is more leftfield than the club's usual fair. This very personal tribute to Coltrane and Albert Ayler, hero of the 1960s avant garde, is accompanied by drummer Chad Taylor and bassist Henry Grimes (who last appeared at the Vanguard with Ayler himself in 1966). It's electrifying, veering from heart-stopping tenderness to paint-stripping cacophony. pirecordings.com