Originally scheduled as an Anderson's working quartet recording, trumpeter Billy Brimfield was in California unable to make the session, and Anderson decided to go ahead with the date, adding percussionist Adam Rudolph at Hamid Drake's suggestion.

Larry Hayrod was then a newcomer to the quartet, replacing bassist Steven Palmore, who had left for New York after a trip to Europe with one of Anderson's ensembles.

[1] [2] The CD reissue adds a bonus track, Drake's composition "Tabla Peace".

In his review for AllMusic, Thom Jurek states that "Anderson is pushing the blues; however elongated and angular, they are recognizable as such and are the spiritual conscience of all the music he plays here.

"[3] The Penguin Guide to Jazz says that "if he is a missing link, what he's bridging is the gap between the spare, blues-soaked sound of early Ornette and the clean-sweep radicalism of AACM.