Elan Mehler was discovered by Gilles Peterson in 2007 and went on to release three albums for Peterson's Brownswood imprint: here he is with a new addition to his spare but very well regarded discography, which has included collabs with Bill Frisell and Becca Stevens, on his own Newvelle imprint.

Comparisons have been made with Keith Jarrett, Brad Meldhau and Bill Evans, so expectations are high and fortunately Mehler doesn’t disappoint. The title track, confusingly, doesn’t imply dancing at all in its spacious, restrained, impressionistic near-rubato and in fact Mehler largely eschews steady time pulse in favour of the kind of rhythmic freedom that Jarrett favoured in his American Quartet, or, as in ‘We Hope’ with the subtlest of implied metre. Tony Scherr and Francisco Mela do a great job of reproducing the Charlie Haden/Paul Motian interplay - Scherr's bass is fat and resonant and Mela is restrained but creative, colouring in beautifully under Mehler's double-handed cascading runs on ‘We Spin’. The sombre, minor key mood continues with ‘Ruby’ but “When You Were Blind’ and ‘East Side Blues’ provide some uplift with a mellow, spacious gospel flavour, with a harmonic simplicity and folksy melody that again echoes Jarrett's idiosyncratic explorations of the idiom.

All the pieces are quite short, like tone-poem miniatures, exploring a single mood, usually calmly melancholic or nostalgic, though ‘The Shakes’ erupts into torrents of notes that approach a Cecil Taylor like intensity. Throughout, Mehler's wonderfully expressive touch and lyrical melodicism and the trio's empathy and sense of space compel the attention even in the quietest moments.

Despite the obvious Jarrett comparisons this record has a real personality: it creates its own atmosphere in a way that jazz records often don’t. Maybe best enjoyed on the nicely-packaged vinyl issue.