Memphis-raised, Brooklyn-based Crump was the Vijay Iyer Trio’s bassist for 20 years, branching out into deeper explorations of his instrument’s capacity in intimate outfits such as Secret Keeper, his duo with Mary Halvorson. Early days in the intensely competitive 1990s West Village jams scene confirmed his bass faith, as well as a dislike of guarded jazz egos and the hierarchy of bandleaders.

Slow Water harks back to childhood evenings by the Mississippi, and ponders water’s endemic abuse by humans and scientific hope that it will if necessary survive us, recovering from our civilisation’s temporary, poisonous bend in the river. As British waterways shockingly and visibly turn brown, this intricately plotted suite is variously inspired by bogs and beavers, insectile chitters and the euphotic zone where light penetrates water sufficiently for photosynthesis, the latter represented here by stabbing funk strings and miasmic swirls.

Crump’s compositions prompt contemporary classical and jazz players’ improv, with New Orleans-style brass warming modernist, staccato slashes, in an album which mirrors liquid bodies in its stratified sound, and brims with scholarly, idealistic ambition.

Opener ‘Sound (Brackish)’ coheres from the swamp which is this album’s natural habitat – a mysterious, prehensile zone, fertile and forbidding to humans. ‘Bogged’ begins with breaths of wind and pizzicato droplets of strings, the vibes tolling evenly as if representing nature’s resilience, till trumpet and trombone pierce then drolly sink into the murk. The brass drawls in ‘Eager’, absorbing the strings into its Louisiana languor. ‘Bend’ concludes with calm, melodic Americana recalling Copland, Crump’s bass coolly dancing as the brass becomes the music’s inviting, embracing voice. Jazz’s birth and endurance in the South’s swampy, sometimes deadly wetlands makes it the ideal redemptive vehicle for this hopeful finish, as the vibes pick out a soft, raindrop phrase, and the music sinks back beneath the water.