Drummer Thomas Strønen, almost from the beginning of his career, realised that mastery of one’s instrument will only take you so far in an age when everyone else – thanks to the wonders of music education – is also acquiring similar mastery. The challenge today is creating a context, and the varied settings in which he has appeared include Parish, Food, Humcrush, Meadow and Needlepoint. His current group Time Is A Blind Guide (the opening lines of an Anne Michaels novel) made its first appearance in 2015 with Kit Downes on piano plus strings, percussionists and the leader in the drum chair. With Lucus, the strings – Håkon Aase, Lucy Railton, Ole Morten Vågan – are retained, while Wakayama-born pianist Ayumi Tanaka appears in Downes’ stead. The ensemble presents different perspectives of itself – a piano trio with violin and cello accompaniment, a drums-piano duo with strings and so on. The shifting tonalities and densities by changing the point of musical emphasis include space around which Tanaka threads her piano while her solo episodes consciously probe associative connections between Japan and Norway.