New York-based Spanish pianist and composer Sánchez, who’s been recently performing with saxophonist David Murray, makes her fifth album (and first for high-quality leftfield Swiss label Intakt). Her previously well-received release SAAM (Spanish American Art Museum) from 2022 was for quintet, while this new one is a stripped-down trio with the rather pessimistic title Perpetual Void.

The music however is far less so; it has an insistent, probing, inquisitive quality about it. The pointillist-like theme of opening track ‘29B’ shifts into the rising and tumbling waves of Sanchez’s otherwise angular piano that artfully navigates the borders of tonality, while the excellent Tordini’s bass solo sounds like a variation on a blues riff. ‘3.30am’ reflects the aptly neurotic ticktock of amnesia at that ungodly hour sounding something like a Bad Plus-minded Ethan Iverson theme until Savannah Harris’ insistent drum delicately hammers the point home. The ‘Black Cyclone’ theme bounces irregularly between high and low registers before breaking suddenly into warmer climes with Sanchez showing she can be percussive yet elegantly lyrical in the progressive modal tradition while making wonderful use of space through her solos. ‘I don’t want to live the wrong life and then die’, one of a few titles worthy of a song or poem, balances a New Music-like insistence with post-1960’s abstract jazz/improv. Mysterious, understated but insistently percussive and hypnotic, Perpetual Void is a pretty rare example of how some of life’s tough challenges can be uncovered both positively and meaningfully by open, creative instrumental music.