Pianist Mike Nock, born in New Zealand but now a long established pillar of the Australian jazz scene, had a pretty thorough jazz apprenticeship, playing with the likes of Coleman Hawkins, Herb Pomeroy's Big Band, Sam Rivers, Tony Williams, Art Blakey, Yusef Lateef, Dionne Warwick, John Handy, Steve Marcus' Count's Rock Band and more before forming the pioneering jazz-rock band Fourth Way in 1968. By the end of the 1970s, he had recorded In Out and Around (Timeless) under his own name with a group that included Mike Brecker, was working with Tom Harrell, John Abercrombie, Eddie Gomez and Jeremy Steig, recording Rainforest (CMP) with him in 1980. Manfred Eicher wrote to him to say how much he enjoyed In Out and Around and expressed the wish it had been for ECM. As a result, a trio session was set up in November 1981. The first day Nock recalls Eicher was not very enthusiastic about the music, but during the next he said the vibe was quite different. “Manfred was relaxed, gave me more directions as to what he wanted to hear in the music,” and between 9am and 11am Ondas was recorded. Nock was impressed by Eicher's production skills. He recalls how on ‘Forgotten Love’ the trio finished the piece and Eicher gesticulated to continue: “If you listen with that in mind you can hear it's stopped – we'd finished. And then it starts again… it works and gives the piece a very satisfying overall shape.” Nock had recently completed a chamber music composition, ‘Aotearoa’, and he took the middle movement from that, ‘Land of the Long White Cloud’, as a tribute to his homeland. The mood of ‘Visionary’ and the title-track are broken by the final original, ‘Doors’. Rather than appearing a rebarbative discursion, it rounds out the album perfectly. Numerous fans of the ECM label name Ondas among their favourite albums – with good reason. It's a minor classic, so be sure to snap this rarity up before it goes out of print again.