The CD is illustrated with an image of the JACK Quartet posing like four of Reservoir Dogs’ renegade hotheads. This is not inappropriate: the young New York-based string quartet’s sting as they lash Xenakis’s Tetras (1983) about the head is coolly controlled…well, ‘violence’ would be entirely the wrong word, but let’s say they play with beautifully choreographed physicality that’s punch-drunk on its own vitality.

This is the finest Tetras on record since – no coincidence – the JACK’s last recording of the piece as part of their complete Xenakis string quartet cycle on Mode. No other quartet quite gets off on Xenakis like the JACKs. Following the strepitous impact of the opening – fundamentals slipping away like a climber’s fingers threatening to plunge him into the ravine below – the quartet don’t shy away from what comes next: gestures that hollow out polite chamber-music niceties from the inside. A note trembles then cracks with all the finesse of an elastic band snapping; a low-end retort sounds like a one-year-old bashing building blocks together – and all framed within socially awkward, disorientating silences.

As in their approach to Ligeti’s 1968 path-finding String Quartet No 2 – where frenzy and stasis are again forced to coexist – the JACK Quartet’s instinct for sonic architecture makes sense of it all, Xenakis’s teasing games with textures that relentlessly transform, twist inside out, dovetail seamlessly into a polar opposite state of being, reaching a dizzying logical end game at around 7'15" as rapidly bowed, high-register glissandos disguise the quartet as some yet-to-be-invented faux-electronic gizmo. After such high praise, to be honest, I found Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts underwhelming. The group’s explicit rhythmic steer, good for Ligeti and Xenakis, feels too intentioned here; nor does Matthias Pintscher pulling all those obvious post-Lachenmann levers do much for me. But the all-encompassing scope and ambition of this disc is winsome. Even if you have to lose some. You’re all right, JACK.