This is Adam Bałdych's second collaboration with the Helge Lien Trio following Bridges from 2015 that promised much. On it, they demonstrated their affinity for incorporating local folkloric influences from their respective countries – Bałdych is from Poland and Lien is from Norway – in a way that preserved the integrity of each other's tradition. The result was both sensitive in execution and aesthetically pleasing in effect. On Brothers the headcount is increased by one with the addition of Tore Brunborg, a much underrated musician who numbers among the finest saxophonists on the European jazz scene. It is a seamless blending, since in whatever musical situation Brunborg seems to find himself, he possesses the priceless gift of doing precisely the right thing at precisely the right time, something that is greatly appreciated by musicians, if not fans or critics. Bałdych contributes eight of the nine tracks, creating an album of shifting moods within an overall narrative arc whose highlight is the way the title-track elides into Leonard Cohen's ‘Hallelujah’ towards the end (tracks six and seven). Bałdych, who is already being viewed as probably the greatest violinist in jazz today, claims the world is on a knife edge between joy and tragedy, which, he says, “can co-exist right next to one another”. It emerges as a leitmotif for the album, bringing to the surface a series of powerful dualities – the tension between Polish and Norwegian sounds, of American and European approaches to rhythm and improvisation and the interface between pleasure and pain which contribute to the depth and integrity of this collaboration.