Locke's initial reputation was built on his consummate musicianship and his powerfully cogent uptempo playing. Over the last 15 years or so he has steadily shown an ability to embrace a wide range of moods and musical challenges. Love is a Pendulum is, perhaps, the logical culmination of this, the centrepiece of which is a five-movement suite based on a poem by writer and musician Barbara Sfraga that gives the album its title. Wide ranging in his compositional scope, from shifting meters and tempi, instrumental texture and colour, there are tricky interludes and themes to negotiate, but this is not music written for complexities sake, but rather flowing from compositional necessity. There is a quantum leap in mood, conception and approach to, say, ‘Love is the Tide’, which might be described as complex contemporary jazz composition and, say, ‘Love is a Planchette’, with its otherworldly, almost ambient conception, focusing the soloists into a more reflective vein that prompts some of the most thoughtful playing on the album. Taken together, this is a mature statement by an artist whose musical life experiences have found focus in a single, important musical statement that speaks of where he has reached in his musical journey through life.

Jazzwise spoke to Joe Locke about the album

What did the album mean to you? It's a powerful statement.

Well, it's a funny thing I feel this recording in many ways is my most personal and my most representative of who I am as a human being. I guess I say that because I always felt I was between worlds, in a sense, I'm someone who has a deep regard for the [jazz] tradition, but when I was 20 years old I knew that I needed to get away from where I was and to push myself. [So] it's sort of indicative of what I have been since, which is sort of rooted in a noble tradition, and yet being influenced by things that are not from that tradition.

This album seems to be a culmination of your musical experiences, musical outlook and who you are as a musician as of April 2014.

Well, I think the best thing we can do is express the ‘now’ in this music, and that's what is always near to me, and why I became a jazz musician. What I love about this music is that it is a mirror for what is happening at present, and for me compositionally. After reading the poem ‘Love is a Pendulum’, I sat at the piano and I realised I was very influenced by this poem by Barbara Sfraga; these pieces started being born in the now and I wasn't thinking stylistically about anything, I was thinking about what wants to emerge out of my subconscious and hopefully it's something that speaks to those things which we all love about jazz, which is how it makes you feel at a visceral level.

You're a player who seems to love the groove, and on this album you show that the groove does not have to be burning tempos, but can be expressed in more reflective ways.

I feel that the most important thing for me, recording or playing for an audience is that the music, to use that eastern term, ‘hits the shakra’. I like to hit the same shakra for the audience as I like being hit for myself, that's the head, the heart and below the waist and by that I mean I want to be intrigued intellectually when I listen to music, and I want my heart to fill up when I listen to music, and I also feel, when I say below the waist, I want to feel it in my body, I want it to make me wanna dance, I want it to hit me in those places and with this record I hope I was successful in hitting those three places.