The sophomore trio album from the London-based pianist-composer John Turville is the follow-up to his Parliamentary Award-winning Midas in 2010. Conception has a clearer signature with Turville both more expansive in his references as well as more exploratory in his approach to rhythm and meter. Turville's compositions have more rhythmically daring themes too with a strong latin American influence coming from his love of tango music in particular. The latter is more about playing experience than theoretical investigation; Turville over the last decade has been involved with traditional tango ensembles such as The London Tango Orchestra through to more contemporary settings with Argentinian vocalist Guillermo Rozenthuler and saxophonist Tim Garland's Transtango among others. He's joined on a few tracks here by a special guest, Edward Vassallo, a long-time principal cellist with the City of Birmingham City Orchestra, contributing some highly assertive, fiery playing. But the tango influence shouldn't be overstated as if it were part of a fusion with jazz; it has been absorbed organically into a piano trio sound in which Turville's fluid vocabulary is, as well, heavily inspired by his classical background, and obvious precursors such as Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett. The band can be as rhythmically propulsive as UK-based piano trio Phronesis, and aside from originals there are two exquisitely elusive rearrangements of Radiohead's ‘Scatterbrain’, and George Shearing's catchy bop composition, ‘Conception’. Turville is digging deep here and he's requiring nothing less from the listener.