This might be a pan-European trio but it's truly a pan-global music as the album title suggests. It's their second album on Edition records following Septembro (released in 2017) and is equally as engaging. The empathy between the three musicians is very much attuned ensuring an effervescent and intimate ensemble dialogue. Original Loose Tubes saxman Julian Argüelles and Portuguese pianist Mário Laginha have been collaborating since the 1990s while the unique Norwegian percussionist Andreas Norbakken and Laghina have spent the last decade accompanying the Portuguese jazz singer Maria Joao. The writing this time is split equally between Argüelles and Laghina and in addition they share four joint credits with Norbakken. A European response to jazz with all its native-folk and classical assimilations has been important to all three musicians, being from a jazz generation that came of age during the Jarrett-Garbarek era of ECM and working with British greats attached to that lineage such as John Taylor and Kenny Wheeler.

But the influence of the American modal continuum and more popular styles through to African music also run deep: for Argüelles it's his close bond to the legendary South African jazz exiles in London, for Laginha, its music from the former Portuguese colonies in Africa. Norbakken is a percussionist who has made a unique contribution to the recordings of compatriot ECM artist Jon Balke among others, and his succinctly inventive pulse-driven textures, using both hands and sticks, is in stirring contrast to the song-like eloquence coming from the combination of saxophone and piano. Plus, there's no shortage of ear-catching tunes and vamps. Atlântico entirely lives up to the high standards of these dedicated top-drawer musicians.