Regrettably I do not have any of Michel Portal's earlier Label Bleu CDs with which to make a comparison, but this disc is substantially different to those I have heard on Dreyfus. On the latter recordings, Portal comes across as a John Surman style multi-instrumentalist, quite happy playing in intimate duo or solo settings with various reeds and bandoneon. The Dreyfus disc Blow Up with accordionist Richard Galliano is especially good.

Dockings is much wider in scope, a sextet featuring Americans Steve Swallow and Joey Baron on electric bass & drums, fellow Frenchmen Bruno Chevillon and Bojan Zulfikarpasic on double bass and piano, and German trumpeter Marcus Stockhausen. Two basses? Well yes, and they don't seem to get in each others way - like much of Label Bleu's output there is a distinct African feel to the music and both basses successfully contribute percussive effects as well as bass lines. Zulfikarpasic sticks mainly to the impressionistic side of things playing thick sustained electric piano mainly in the background - although he takes a good acoustic piano solo on the bopish K.O. Which puts the horns squarely up front : playing a mix of moody blurs and squalls (Stockhausen on muted trumpet, Portal playing low fuzzy notes on bass clarinet) and crystal clean melodies - in the case of the opener Barouf over a background of dense jungle percussion. The best track is probably Dolphy,  featuring Portal ranging on bass clarinet in a gulping Dolphyesque manner but I rather like the freewheeling Tourniole too. Portal's bandoneon gets an outing in Ida Lupino, a sentimental theme augmented by Swallow's singing guitarlike bass. 

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