If you played this spaciously exploratory album without investigating its origins, you might disrespectfully ponder if Joe Lovano had moved into sound-of-silence ECM territory as an audience-building variant on his more familiar avant-bop and world-musical agendas. But this captivating project has been smouldering for a long time – Lovano has known and admired adventurous pianist and Anthony Braxton collaborator Marilyn Crispell since the mid-1980s, and versatile percussionist Carmen Castaldi since they played together as Ohio teenagers. The three of them (plus producer Manfred Eicher) have boldly adopted a repertoire rooted in 12-tone serial forms, to produce what the saxophonist calls, “some of the most intimate and personal music I’ve recorded so far”. Castaldi’s bells-and-gongs soundscape for Lovano’s echoing first tenor entry on ‘One Time In’ presents the saxophonist with a wealth of tonal temptations. Lovano’s dialogue with Crispell’s piano on ‘Seeds of Change’ eerily invoke Bobby Wellins’ and Stan Tracey’s ‘Starless and Bible Black’ for this listener, the brief unison melodies in ‘Razzle Dazzle’ and ‘Sparkle Lights’ invite quietly scintillating piano/sax conversations, and Lovano on the Hungarian tarogato dreamily and then urgently reacts to Castaldi’s intensifying snaps and clangs on ‘Mystic’. There are almost motionless reveries for Crispell and Castaldi, a ghostly, tone-bending passage for solo gongs, and a headlong free-jazz charge for a finale. Free-improv-meets-serialism it may be, but these three constantly unveil their diverse but devoted jazz roots.