Pianist Mike Longo has been around the block more than a few times. The last time I saw him was decades ago with Dizzy Gillespie, the quintet with Rudy Collins on drums and Al Gafa on guitar, at the short-lived Penthouse Club on London's Park Lane. Problems with the gaming licence closed the joint and it never reopened, but Longo sounded good in those days. Today, taking into account his immense experience and the presence of two wily old performers like Cranshaw and Nash beside him, one would expect everything to be just as cool. But the trouble is Mike is one of jazz's risk-takers. The tempo of the title track, for example, borders on the suicidal. And it was also looking for trouble to choose as many familiar jazz classics as he does here. His catch-all selection includes ‘Nefertiti’, ‘Impressions’, ‘Poinciana’ and ‘Cantaloupe Island’, all of which are sure to invite unfavourable comparisons with the original versions and the giants who created them [Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane, Ahmad Jamal and Herbie Hancock, to mention only a fab few]. Mike just about makes it, but the old fluency is not quite there. His touch remains powerful but his slight but bothersome imprecisions in chord choices and melody lines gradually become harder to ignore. File this under ‘Records we grab with Delighted Anticipation only to hear with mounting Tension and Anxiety’.