From the 2010 release of their eponymous debut album, sax-led trio Partikel have been lauded for their powerful individual playing and collective sound. Extensive touring revealed them to a wide audience as exceptional improvisers, with Eric Ford’s disciplined and eloquent percussion underpinning the organic interplay between Duncan Eagles nimble and surprising saxophone and Max Luthert’s richly-voiced double bass. Subsequent Whirlwind releases expanded their sonic palette, first with a string quartet (String Theory) and then with additional musicians and electronica (Cohesion). Coming out of the pandemic hiatus, therefore, it is interesting to discover this debut recording for the German Berthold Records marks a very definite return to their acoustic trio roots. With the exception of some multi-tracked saxophone bookending ‘Citizen’ this is very much an unplugged offering. What that reveals, happily, is that the band have lost none of their strengths while deepening the poise and maturity of composition and structure. The album sparkles with quickly memorable hooks, generously shared between sax and bass, with each tune a series of often contrasting sections giving melodic elements their own context and atmosphere. The regular use of pulses – as in the Morse Code opening for ‘Cryptography’ or the recurrent themes of ‘The Butterfly Effect’ – frees Ford to reflect and refract the melodic lines or withdraw altogether, while that latter number also showcases Eagles’ and Luthert’s control of tone and voice. The democracy of interaction throughout nicely exploits the spaciousness of the chordless trio format, and thanks to the players’ mutual confidence it never puts a foot wrong. It’s a highly listenable combination, beautifully recorded with an enveloping natural sound perfectly suited to the effortless intelligence of Partikel’s immersive music.