Though the Austrian bassistcomposer Johannes Berauer isn't listed as personnel, he's the main man behind the new recording Hourglass. With a background in jazz, having studied with Bob Brookmeyer, Berauer has been writing mostly large-scale works up to now, highlighted by Vienna Chamber Diaries, which featured the acclaimed Pat Metheny Group pianist Gwilym Simcock, who's also part of Berauer's new Austrian-British chamber-jazz sextet. To assume that Hourglass comes out of the ‘Third Stream’ tradition that fuses together classical and jazz, however, is some way off the mark. Though Berauer indeed works in the overlaps between composition and improvisation, he draws from a broader range of influences that stem from the sextet's Austrian musicians’ specialisms in Indian, North African and Arabic music. Berauer is currently a studio arranger-director for acclaimed Tunisian oud player Anouar Brahem and his compatriot Bernhard Schimpelsberger studied traditional Indian drumming with the masters, as well as making a contribution to the London-based Indo-fusion scene. These influences find expression in a familiar context alongside the angular rhythms of 1970s jazz-rock, albeit a more sanitized version, as we hear on the Trilok Gurtu-ish ‘East’ and as a subtler percussive nuance that blends with Messiaen-like tonal inflexions on the three-part ‘Triptych’ suite. The esteemed young Britten Sinfonia violinistleader Thomas Gould shows off his mesmerising tone on a haunting piano-violin duo titled ‘Spiral’, while the specialist jazzers, The Impossible Gentlemen's Simcock and highly-regarded Mancunian guitar veteran Mike Walker, combine empathetically, the latter's solo on the jazz rock-era ballad ‘Nocturne’ morphing tastefully from yearning sighs to McLaughlin-like lightning fretwork. It's classy recital-room jazz minus the tuxedos