Perhaps the first thing to say is that this new release, along with its predecessor on the same label, Listen To Hear (see Short Cuts, Jazzwise 230), certainly puts to rest any health worries mentioned in connection with Riley’s recent archive release Live In The USA (Jazzwise 238). He sounds very much in charge, with twelve tracks in his typical motivic style which now reminds me somewhat of the mildly-obsessive mid-register focus of someone like Mal Waldron. All of the pieces carry the listener forward, despite there being no obvious hooks in most cases, the exception to this being two takes on Jerome Kern’s ‘Long Ago And Far Away’ (of which I find the second both more concise and more varied). The treatments have no particular nostalgia content, but it turns out that Howard himself can be retrospective, to the extent of including a new version of ‘Sunflower’, an original first heard on his 1967 limited-edition debut album with Barry Guy and Jon Hiseman.