Given that Paul Motian had always led groups which pushed against the boundaries of jazz orthodoxy, it came as a surprise when, in 1992, he formed a band which drew almost exclusively on the legacy of bebop for its material. The Electric Bebop Band seemed like a retreat, a capitulation to the conservative consensus which reveres bebop as the most authentic and sacred of jazz forms.

The unusual instrumental line-up of two guitars and two saxophones has remained constant since the start, but the personnel has changed several times and the group which Motian brought to Dublin was a recent formation. This alone, however, was not sufficient to explain a performance which was passionless, mundane and entirely lacking in the energy, vitality and sense of discovery in the moment, that gave bebop its revolutionary momentum.

Especially puzzling was Motian's decision to choose two guitarists (Ben Monder and Steve Cardenas) and two saxophonists (Pietro Tonolo and Chris Cheek) who were stylistically so similar on each pair of instruments. This suppressed the emergence of the kind of creative tension which occurs when a dialectic of difference is explored musically. The music of Charles Mingus, for example, never sounded so polite and well mannered; the soloists playing in a rote fashion that seemed more learned than felt.

Only once, almost at the end, was a fuller realisation of the group unleashed in a piece where everybody soloed simultaneously. But it was too late; impossible at that stage to dispel the disappointment of a frustratingly pallid performance.