Cactus Truck's Live in USA CD is packaged in a sleeve with the dimensions of an oversized postcard, and the music is oversized to match. The Amsterdam-based trio -- saxophonist John Dikeman, bassist/guitarist Jasper Stadhouders, drummer Onno Govaert -- plays high-voltage free jazz with only scattered respites across the disc's 71-plus-minute length. The liners say that the album features three nearly complete performances, which suggests that the group's shows might be on the short side, but given the energy expended here, it would seem that lengthy shows could be hazardous to the bandmembers' health. Cactus Truck played 37 shows from coast to coast across the States from late October to mid-December 2012, and the first two tracks here, the 17-plus-minute "Prairie Oyster" and ten-minute "Seans Gone," were recorded at Squidco Records in Wilmington, North Carolina with Jeb Bishop guesting on trombone; it was merely their fourth show, when they had hardly started their cross-country ramble and apparently had lots of energy to burn. Stadhouders and Govaert produce a tumultuous racket beneath Dikeman's brawling, overblown Brötzmann-esque howls, pushed through his sax by the lungful as Bishop slips, slides, and blurts his own agitated commentary. Suddenly Dikeman and Govaert hand the reins entirely to Bishop and a noisy, chunky Stadhouders -- plus an enthusiastic audience member -- until a thicket of clipped sax and 'bone phrases accompanied by rolling drums escalates into a flat-out noise assault. And we're only halfway through the first track of the maelstrom that is Live in USA.

1		Prairie Oyster
2		Seans Gone
3		Hot Brown
4		The Twerk
5		Magnum Eyebrow
6		Wedding Present (Sorry Erin)
7		Ninja

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