Guitarist Ethan Margolis is an unusual artist in that he reversed the usual flow of jazz traffic by deserting his midwestern US hometown and travelling to Europe - specifically southern Spain - in search of musical fulfilment.

In this case, his inspiration and passion was the flamenco tradition, and he immersed himself fully in the roots of the music, living within the Gitano community, learning the breadth of the tradition, and playing extensively around Andalusia.

He subsequently returned to the US and started developing his own fusion of different genres, all of which the music business in its wisdom tends to lump together under the title of ‘roots’ - in this case, Cuban son, delta blues and folk/Americana all seem to have contributed.

Margolis is a terrific guitarist: while he usually plays nylon string, this album features him on steel string on most tracks, and the stark trio settings enable him to display his precision technique and his creative imagination to full effect: there are no clichéd licks here, nor the empty showers of semiquavers that less creatively assured guitarists are prone to resort to.

Heavy hitters Larry Grenadier and Eric Harland are as tight, innovative and flexible as you would expect from such top-of-the-range players. However Margolis’ eclectic tastes are rather too diffuse to settle on a single direction: there are hints of delta blues (‘Roaming’), echoes of flamenco (‘Rincones’), atmospheric jams over ostinatos (‘Beginning With A Groove’), distant chanting vocals, and even beatnik-style spoken word wig-out (‘Angels Exist’).

Perhaps the nearest comparison might be to Hungarian steel-string player Gabor Szabo, who had a similarly eclectic approach back in the freewheeling 1960s, but alas where Szabo’s offerings exhibited a slightly shonky charm, this album comes across as rather over-earnestly invested in its own importance. Great as his talent is, and superb as his accompanists are, the end result impresses as a curate’s egg that is less than the sum of its occasionally excellent parts.