Drawn from There Is a Garden to be issued this June on the No Quarter label 'Flowers That Talk' is hitting the spot mightily, the ache and the ecstasy of the thing resounds quickly enough after a few listens and remains. Velvet Underground springs to mind - there's also a loose blues connotation in the alt.punky swirl of all this implied freeness and chugging momentum developed eventually. These Beings are out of New York City and count blissed out guitarist Steve Gunn, Ceramic Dog bassist/synthist Shahzad Ismaily - known, with Arooj Aftab and Vijay Iyer for the stimulating Love in Exile - avant saxist, singer, guitarist Zoh Amba (fairly crucially for the vocal conjuring ''that mystic baffling wonder'' in a Walt Whitman sense of acceptance) and drummer Jim White rolling in like the most welcome of dawns. Amba, who has been inspiring so many avant heads across the international free-jazz diaspora for some time now going by some of the raves she is understandably picking up on specialist ezines, is touring in Europe at the moment. If thinking of venturing in the slipstream between the viaducts of your dreams to celebrate May day next week in lieu of hearing Beings in the flesh for the current time being - yes, how perhaps apt - Amba hits Amsterdam's Bimhuis with her band Bhakti that features Farida Amadou and Chris Corsano, this coming Wednesday night.

Beings, photo: There is a Garden cover art detail