Jonny Mansfield doesn’t let the grass grow under his feet - not content with learning to play the vibraphone with four mallets simultaneously, collecting numerous awards for his performing and compositional skills, and writing and arranging for an eleven-piece band, he has filled up what idle hours remain in his days by enrolling on a Masters course in psychology.

Now he has devoted his intimidating energies to a new and highly idiosyncratic musical project, in part inspired by his studies: a set of written and improvised music for two bowed string instruments joined with two percussion instruments, with Will Sach’s bass as a bridge between. Mansfield’s compositional sophistication is impressive: the chamber-string writing blends seamlessly into improvised solo passages, mostly handled by Mansfield or the equally fluent Dominic Ingham on violin, then back into written parts, sometimes expanding into group improv passages along the way as on ‘Flicker’, sometimes keeping close to a simple folk-inspired melody as on ‘Organise The Air In Front Of You’, sometimes subtly exploring modish fractured odd-meter time signatures as on ‘Ripples’.

The wonderful Sach has a thoughtful bass feature on ‘Norwood’: James Maddren is as inventive as ever in creating textural support as well as rhythmic impetus: Midori Jaeger swaps between rich arco tones and sprightly pizzicato. The mood is predominantly stately and introspective, and some of the impetus gets rather lost as we progress gradually into the less defined compositions of the second half, but Mansfield avoids the obvious Third-Streamish implications of the line-up by keeping things relaxed and open-sounding, and the band turn in some superbly poised performances that really do justice to the subtlety of the writing.