Pianist Latchin has been around for a while now and remains one of our most consistently rewarding players. This is his fourth trio album and it departs from its predecessors in focusing exclusively on Latchin's own compositions, while unveiling a new trio with localite Brown allied to visiting US star Joe Farnsworth.

The effect is quite magical; Latchin's crisp, un-histrionic keyboard style carrying all before him, each piece unfurling without fuss or bombast. Farnsworth can either play time or break up the beat in the modern manner; happily, he knows which approach is best, piece by piece and his presence is a definite plus.

Latchin wears his influences well, to me he sounds like an updated bebopper, good at making cleverly coherent runs, with a Sonny Clark or Wynton Kelly mentality in mind. His ‘Say's Who’ has a neat riff for starters before its stop-start continuation leads piano and bass into a harmonically canny improvisation, Brown his usual adept self in solo. ‘Prim and Proper’ fits its title, again with a perky motif, and is for Latchin's daughter, its tempo stomp-like, the ideas lucid and the structure clear.

There's a sense throughout of a well-ordered mind at work, and an engaging enthusiasm for the task in hand. ‘A Mother's Love’, written for his newly-born son, is more mellow, elegiac almost and quietly chorded. ‘Train for Thought’ is a fast-fingered romp, Brown and Farnsworth hot-foot in pursuit, the ideas crowding in on each other. Much the same goes for ‘A Stitch In Time’, well-crafted and interesting, ‘O Mito‘ is a Latin piece dedicated to Joao Gilberto, nicely animated, and again confirms this pianist's talent for creating memorable tunes, which have plenty in them for the soloist to consider.