If Carl Ludwig Hübsch plays his tuba in the woods and there's no one to hear it, does it make a sound? One presumes that he can hear what he's playing, but one also concludes from his self-penned liner notes to the second CD by Longrun Development of the Universe that at least two more elements -- someone to share in the process of collaboration, and someone to listen -- are absolute prerequisites before those low notes issuing forth from the big horn's bell could be defined as "music." And so Hübsch and his collaborators -- Köln tenor saxophonist Matthias Schubert and Dutch trombonist Wolter Wierbos -- engage in stream-of-consciousness dialogues that seem to involve not only themselves but the listener as well: anyone involved in the conversation, or lack of conversation, can seemingly send the collective off on one tangent or another. These tangents range from the harmonically consonant to the ear-bendingly dissonant, from the wildly improvisational to the intricately scored, from the ultra-serious to the just plain goofy (the CD booklet photo is a tipoff that these guys are not exactly straight-laced academics), and from the densely constructed to the sparse and barely audible. All of the aforementioned are present in NGC 2265, at nearly 19 minutes the longest track here, and the listener truly feels drawn into the music during some well-placed silent moments, when the mere act of shifting in a chair can be the loudest thing within earshot. But lest one think that, despite the photographic display of the threesome's crazy mugs, the band is comprised of theoreticians more than performers of warm, engaging, and even tuneful music, NGC 2265 is followed by the traditional El Eterno, an alternatingly subtle and beautifully spirited number that calls to mind Charlie Haden and an homage to Ché. And so it goes through these 11 tracks ranging from three NGC pieces that might be considered the album's main course down to five Fragments, usually less than a minute in length and presented numerically out of sequence, which the listener is encouraged to sample as if a plate of appetizers had been left on the table through the duration of a meal. Hübsch, in addition to being quite adept at bringing forth every possible note and noise that can be generated by a tuba, is a fine leader of this mini-ensemble in that he writes in full consideration of the bandmembers he's employed, realizing that both Schubert and Wierbos are phenomenal inside/outside players who excel at the sorts of extended techniques that are better described as snorts, wheezes, splutters, and yowls than as musical notation. Nevertheless, real notes on paper are an important part of the equation, even as the musicians' personalities transcend what's on the page. The charts are demanding, challenging -- and fun, leavened by swing and the feeling that three members of a crazy brass band have wandered into a corner of the musical universe where anything and everything are acceptable. The Is This Our Music? title, as Hübsch states in the liners, is an obvious reference to Ornette's This Is Our Music, here modified to signify an inquiring mind ready to go anywhere in search of musical inspiration. But he needs you, the listener, to complete the journey. If you're interested in adventurous music, bring your ears to Carl Ludwig Hübsch's sound world, meet him halfway, and you won't be disappointed. ~ Dave Lynch, Rovi

1		Fragment 3
2		NGC 2265
3		El Eterno
4		Fragment 1
5		Fragment 2
6		Fragment 5
7		Remembering
8		NGC 2270 Terrier
9		NGC 2274 Akkord
10		Fragment 4
11		Al Kaphra