The 1970s New York circles that David Glasser grew up in were steeped in jazz and the politics of civil rights. His father Ira was the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, and critic and activist Nat Hentoff was a contact – it was Hentoff who recommended the late Lee Konitz as a tutor when the teenaged Glasser took up alto sax. Glasser went on to play with the likes of Clerk Terry and Illinois Jacquet, and currently holds the alto chair with the Count Basie Orchestra.

The strongest influence here though, is Glasser's deep-rooted grasp of jazz history – he has been on the faculty of The New School for over 20 years – coupled with hints of Konitz's icy sound. The resulting aesthetic combines modernist fluency with the occasional guttural smear and finds obtuse linear pathways flickering between tension and release.

Glasser's rhythm section of pianist Andy Milne backed by Ben Allison and Matt Wilson on bass and drums, also drawn from the New School faculty, are equally versed in jazz tradition and, like the leader, play with left-field edge. The result is a politically themed album that digs beneath the surface of acoustic modern jazz with humour and bite.

The album opens with ‘Knit Wit’ following an angular path, ‘Justice’ upping the tempo with walking bass swing and the funky ‘It's Nothing New’ fracturing into abstraction. Elsewhere, ‘Dilemonk’ is a stoned nod to Thelonious Monk, ‘Freedom’ and ‘Revolver’ alternately gather force and subside and ‘Glee for Lee’ is an elegiac sax and drum memento to the late Lee Konitz. Highlight is the melancholic balladry of ‘Deep Dark.’ The album's only cover, ‘It's a Small World’, is arranged for flute to underscore the album's meaning-of-democracy theme.