There is something predictably unpredictable about each Joe Lovano album release, which is never to stand still in one place for too long. Of his most recent Blue Note releases, Folk Art (2008) used as its inspiration the 1960s avant garde and subsequent loft scene of the 1970s as its jumping off point; Bird Songs (2011) explored the music of Charlie Parker while Cross Culture (2013), with two drummers, took as its inspiration the African drum choir: “The idea wasn't just to play at the same time, but collectively create within the music,” explained Lovano. This underlying principal of collective music-making might be traced back to the Paul Motian Trio, where the musical dialogue between Lovano and guitarist Bill Frisell, ably mediated by Motian's subtle dialogue, was a feature of their music. With Sound Prints, Lovano takes as its guiding spirit Wayne Shorter's music. Thus a feature of this album is the spontaneous interaction and simultaneous improvisation of Lovano and Douglas on the two songs each they contribute to the album: Lovano's ‘Sound Prints’ and ‘Weatherman’, and Douglas' ‘Sprints’ and ‘Power Ranger’. Both ‘Sound Prints’ and ‘Sprints’ are progeny (however distantly related) of Shorter's own ‘Footprints’, in fact you can hear elements of ‘Footprints’ swirling around ‘Sprints’, while ‘Weatherman’ – a tribute to Shorter's longstanding co-leadership of Weather Report – has its basis in the blues. Centrepiece are two compositions for the band by Shorter himself, ‘Destination Unknown’ and ‘To Sail Beyond the Sunset’. A blues feeling – not ‘the blues’ – in terms of infection and allusion is present in these pieces, indeed the whole album. While the Shorter originals are less abstracted than the Lovano and Douglas pieces, they are satisfyingly enigmatic for all that.