Lineage is the eighth album in as many years from 29-year-old German pianist Pablo Held and his regular collaborators, bassist Robert Landfermann and drummer Jonas Burgwinkel. In some ways, after the experimentation of projects such as 2014's The Trio Meets John Scofield (the title explains what happened on that one) and 2015's Recondita Armonia (cover versions of pieces by classical composers such as Scriabin, Puccini and Hindemith), it marks a return to their earliest group mode: Held comes up with a series of original tunes and the trio plays them the way he intended, with less of a ‘live concept where we basically deconstructed and reconstructed everything on the spot’, as Held explains. Not that there's any lack of spontaneity about the results; you can certainly hear Held's commitment to what you might call the unwonted chord throughout. “When I compose I try to find sounds and voicings that take me out of my comfort zone,” he says – the skitterings of ‘Meta’ should take most listeners out of theirs too. The lineage referred to in the album title includes Monk and Bach equally, and the music is propelled by the tension between the classical and jazz, and the European and US, music-making traditions.