Avant-improv trio Babkas follows up its self- titled debut with Ants to the Moon, a tumble- and-tilt feast of asymmetric time signatures, accelerating tempos and jagged melodies. Guitarist Brad Schoeppach, alto saxophonist Briggan Krauss, and drummer Aaron Alexander, who share compositional duties here, explore the full range of textures and colors on their instruments, creating image-rich works tangled with hauntingly impressionistic and frenetically hallucinogenic soundscapes. While the improv action is often freewheeling as melodic structures are assaulted with shiftings, shatterings, and frayings, there are also pockets of melancholic and meditative calm that keep the disc from spinning too far out into the fringe. Above all, there's great ensemble performances with pleny of free space as well as engaging stretches of harmonic interplay, especially when Schoeppach and Krauss intertwine lines while Alexander flicks, skips, and ricochets supporting rhythms. Prime example: the interweaving of instrumental voices in "Rocky and Rachel;" the perky opening number that melds jazz with the spirited drive of Balkan folk dance music. It's a sprinting tune the wild Bulgarian wedding band clarinetist Ivo Papasov would heartily approve of, especially when Krauss blows fast clarinet-like tones on his alto. Babkas' music is a study of delightful instru- mental juxtapositions where zig-zagging, note- splicing runs straighten and curve into slow, circular meanderings, where relaxed musings erupt into frenzied scramblings, and where mashing turbulence dissolves into whimsical skitterings. From the compelling storyline of the epic I5-minute "Cautionary Tale" to the rousing "Ned," which swings in its own angular logic, the operative phrase in describing Ants to the Moon is "expect the unexpected."