Audible Edge is now in its third year. It was mounted by rising grassroots music organisation Tone List, with Tura New Music and the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA). The 2019 festival featured three concerts: the first a tight affair at PICA, and the later two more sprawling events in Fremantle and which included a triple album launch from locals Shoshana Rosenberg, trio Original Past Life, and the Moon Project.

Drummer Ben Greene, trombonist Matthias Müller and organist Kirsten Symczycz at Audible Edge. Photo: supplied

Audible Edge shares several artists with Canberra’s Sound Out and Sydney’s NOW now festivals. Like both organisations, free improvisation dominates the program, although other approaches do appear. This does however make the festival feel a bit random. While the tremendous electroacoustic set from Canada’s France Jobin for example was a standout, her precisely monitored, immersive aesthetic sits at considerable remove from the freewheeling in-the-moment experimentation of Sydney’s extended brass player Jim Denley. This diversity is bracing but also at times confusing, and it was only on listening back to Jobin’s record Singulum that it became clear that her set and those of several others were less...