As the booklet notes to this newly released ex-NDR broadcast recording make clear, in this instance the word ‘timeless’ has a double-meaning. Firstly, that this starry line-up was assembled in association with the Dutch record label of that name for whom all its members recorded; secondly, that the music on offer – solid post-bop – had, by the early 1980s, already entered the mainstream of the genre. Indeed, in these days of revisionist history, this album is a timely reminder that in an era some now think belonged exclusively to Marsalis and company, there was many an elder statesman who could show the young lions a thing or two. The opening ‘Tokudo’ is a get-to-know-the-band blues which more or less maps out the territory of the entire session; Fuller, all dry-tone and clipped-articulation, Hutcherson a glittering spray of virtuosity and Land – deep in his Coltrane bag – offering an earnest solo that eventually overstays its welcome by several choruses. Of the three frontliners, it’s the vibraphonist who leaves the deepest impression, his feature on ‘My Foolish Heart’ moving from stately to swinging and back again, proving that, even surrounded by classy compositions by Walton and Land, a well-placed standard can still steal the show. If there’s any real criticism it’s technical rather than musical, NDR’s engineers taking their time to adjust the balance at the start, before settling the band down into one of those curiously ironed-out sound mixes that seem to bedevil jazz radio. Not an earth-shattering record, perhaps, but, as the title infers, still a relevant one.