Given the name of former Journey drummer Steve Smith's jazz unit, it seems only right to begin with a little vital – if seemingly paradoxical and self-contradictory – information.

This looks like two albums but, commercially at any rate, is really one: A Prayer for the Generations is a bonus release that you get with Time Flies. And this looks like one group but is functionally two: Time Flies is a 12-track piano trio disc on which four cuts feature supplementary players, whereas A Prayer for the Generations was recorded as a four-piece throughout, starting out as a busk of Trane's ‘One Down, One Up’ with guesting tenorist George Garzone, which then came to serve as an introduction to an eight-part ‘collective group composition’.

And it's dynamic and sometimes thrilling stuff, moving between straightahead and fusion. The originals are interspersed with numbers by Bud Powell and others (‘Tempus Fugue-It’, ‘Un Poco Loco’), and a Joe Zawinul tune makes its way into the Prayer for the Generations suite. The recording unit(s) has (have) deep roots: Vital Information released its debut album 40 years ago, while Smith first collaborated with guest Garzone in the latter's trio The Fringe in the early 1970s. But the music feels as fresh as tomorrow.