The freedom of jazz and the rootedness of world music – those are the twin inspirations of Philip Clouts, South African- born, Guildhall-trained and now Dorset-resident. The South African influence is clear in two tracks – ‘Direction South’ and the title track – while Clouts explores the Sufi traditions of North Africa in ‘Lila’, Nigerian rhythms in ‘Walking In Starlight’, gospel-jazz in ‘Meandering’, and Southern European folk in ‘Taranto’ and ‘Amor’. While these are the starting points, all are filtered through Clouts’ own compositional style and the playing of his tightly disciplined quartet. His writing sounds detailed and the themes are extended, so while soloists – chiefly Eagles and Clouts himself – have the freedom to improvise they also have a lot of melodic and harmonic material already set out for them. The rhythms – Keen plays electric bass throughout – are structured at the funky end of things. There's certainly a lot to enjoy here, especially when Eagles lets go a little, but the feeling of formality can have a constraining effect. Imagine a flamboyantly patterned African Dashiki shirt intended to hang loosely but instead tucked into a firmly-belted, neatly-ironed pair of chinos.