So rich is his Blue Note discography it’s easy to forget that Hill, whose music sounds as unique today as it did back in the 1960s, also had a ‘second life’ so to speak beyond the glories of Point Of Departure and Compulsion. The four albums the pianist cut for Black Saint in the 1980s are fascinating because of the vastly different facets of his artistic personality they unveil, moving from the solo piano sessions of Faces Of Hope and Verona Rag to the trio and quartet recordings of Strange Serenade and Shades. Hill unaccompanied is an absorbing and rewarding listen, above all for the chance to hear clearly the harmonic and metric escarpments on the vast landscape of his compositions, but no less appealing is the small group work, above all Strange Serenade, where the enormously rich rhythmic complexity of his use of the keyboard – the near constant pull between suspension and propulsion – is well reinforced by the sterling shift put in by double bassist Alan Silva and drummer Freddie Waits. The album title is indeed telling. It’s a song to a lover that has all of the barbs as well as the beauty of real romance.