19th century French poet Arthur Rimbaud has famously inspired some of rock's finest lyricist, including Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison and Patti Smith. He chose to descend into silence early in his life, yet the appeal and influence of his work has persisted. Ten years ago Hector Zazou recorded Sahara Blue, urbane settings of traslations of Rimbaud's poems, performed with help from Jhon Cale. Now Acustronic Ensemble pays tribute to Rimbaud with just a few well chosen recitations from his writing and a fabric of music that manages to convey something of the hallucinatory vividness of his poetry. Proximity is part of the vividness; although there is depth of field to the recording, many sounds are heard in close-up. And although the sounds are various, they often seem to be enfolding around one another in a physical way. Distinctive instrumentation conveys something of the character of the music: Vito M Laforgia plays electric upright bass, electronics, megaphone and saw, with Giuseppe Mariani on trumpet and laptop, Punck using laptop, 'objects' and field recordings, Luca Sigurtà 'objects' and tapes and Fhievel feedback mixer and field recordings. Mariani's trumpet supplies some jazz inflections and associations but Free For(m) Rimbaud is not anchored in any particular idiom. In a single half-hour movement it glides across the contours of Ambient, avant rock, freely improvised and electroacoustic music, defining its own territory. Scratchy, twitchy rhythms of undefined origin are multilayered and fringed with electronic gleam, a synthesized sirocco, instrumental gloss, odd banshee wailing. Don't be deterred if French symbolist poetry is not your particular cup of absinthe; this is still a musically intriguing and consistently diverting release.