Recordings featuring the Norwegian bassist Mats Eilertsen are now numerous but generally worth checking out. Among those notable contributions that have passed through this writer's ears include recordings made with Food, Sonny Simmons and Alexi Tuomarila. His own recordings as leader with the Norwegian based Hubro label have received less exposure but that looks set to change with Rubicon his debut for ECM for whom he has appeared on recordings by the pianist Tord Gustavsen among a dozen others. A bassist is in a great position to listen carefully to the sounds forming around him and that comes out in his arrangements for septet (an international lineup that includes the Norwegian guitarist Thomas Dahl, Finnish drummer Olavi Louhivuori and Dutch jazz pianist Harmen Fraanje), a deceptive collective noun as his arrangements here stresses a stripping away rather than a thickening of the instrumental colours at his disposal. Based on a commission for the Norwegian Vossajazz festival, Rubicon opens with a pair of gracefully reflective ballads, ‘Canto’ and ‘Cross the Creek’, that are characteristic of an ECM sound in which space has equal significance as the notes played. But Eilertsen's brightly nuanced ensemble arrangements and playful lyricism are also in evidence on tracks such as the loping Frisell-like ‘March’ and breezily Pat Metheny trio-influenced ‘September’, while ‘Blublue’ sounds like an Ornette Coleman tune in balletic slow motion.