Recommended to Matthew Halsall’s Gondwana Records by then- labelmates GoGo Penguin, there’s certainly common ground between these British jazz peers. Minimalism, spirituality, melody, and subtly- shifting musical cycles link them. Mammal Hands, though, cleave closer to the warmly healing qualities Halsall admires, and reference the folk rounds they absorbed in Essex and Suffolk folk clubs at least as much as the electronica Jordan and Nick Smart once DJed. There was a lucid clarity to their 2014 debut, Animalia, uncluttered like a forest clearing. Floa develops that sound on the back of heavy, transatlantic touring. Nick Smart’s minimalist influences seem more pronounced, beautifully so with the crystalline, repetitive piano ripples of two-minute miniature ‘The Falling Dream’. Brother Jordan’s sinuous sax on ‘Think Anything’ recalls ‘Take Five’ at times, while Nick’s churning gospel-blues suggests GoGo Penguin’s current label, Blue Note, in the clearest nod to their jazz foundations. ‘Kudu’s gallop and gambol, insistent then introspective with a swirling, burrowing sax at its core, finds a freer path through their pastoral, often gorgeous aesthetic. Borrowed Gondwana Orchestra strings on ‘In The Treetops’ meanwhile give stately grace to a sax motif of maddening, car alarm repetition (Coltrane and Sanders influences take fuller flight elsewhere). Rarely arresting, despite the bustling climaxes well-described by ‘Quiet Fire’, it’s an album to sink into over repeat doses: meditative, subtly shifting, organically growing.