If there is an assumption that having a big celebrity dad gives him an advantage on others regardless of merit, you wouldn't blame Kyle Eastwood for feeling he had something to prove. Whether this is true or not, Eastwood Jr is a genuinely modest kind of jazz musician who's been plugging away at honing his UK-based band into a considerable live act around the festivals and jazz clubs of Europe. It's a development that's also transferred very well into the studio on his previous release The View From Here in 2013. Timepieces is the follow up and it's more of the same but this time there's a theme that sees him dedicate the album to his love of the hard bop and modal classics of the late-1950s to mid-1960s that he used to listen to on his parent's record player. Included here are versions of Horace Silver's ‘Blowin’ the Blues Away’ and Herbie Hancock's ‘Dolphin Dance’ (with Eastwood's Jaco-like fretless bass leading the theme), and an original, ‘Peace of Silver’, which pays respect to the hard bop pioneer who passed away in the making of this recording. But it isn't a retro tribute: Eastwood as usual injects a cool, cosmopolitan flavour into his music. As a decade long resident of Paris and a live touring globetrotter, his compositions are infused with rhythms from Africa and latin music that spring into life with his new Cuban-born, London based drummer Ernesto Simpson, although he's someone Eastwood has worked with frequently live. Simpson brings a looser, more explosive element than on previous studio outings. There's also a redrafted non-jazzy, serenely minimalistic interpretation of his ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’ theme from his dad's film of the same name, the first time Eastwood Jr has recorded one of his film soundtrack themes in this context. There's more diversity in the Mark Isham-ish cool fusion of ‘Nostalgique’, longtime sideman and excellent pianist Andrew McCormack's dreamy Mehldau-ish ‘Vista’, while ‘Incantation’ has a fiery Brandon Allen sax solo that is reminiscent of Chris Potter.