This is Smith and Kellock's third duo collaboration on record and perhaps more than its predecessors is revealing of an unselfconscious ability to aspire to the highest levels of the improviser's art. Doing what they do here, interpreting the American popular song and classic jazz standards, they emerge as two world-class improvisers. They succeed in demonstrating there will always be an audience for a combination of good songs played well and the sensitive and meaningful extemporisation that flows from them. Here they reimagine 12 standards plus an eight-minute medley of classic jazz and popular standards with the kind of effortless ease of master musicians. Sometimes it is difficult to reconcile the suave and inspired understatement Kellock brings to this album with the unfettered exuberance of his memorable collaboration with Liane Carroll in 2008, or the bustling energy he brings to his own trio with Kenny Ellis and John Rae. Smith seems to be emerging in middle-age as one of the most emotionally satisfying saxophone players in jazz, an aspect of his playing that seems to have come to the fore since his collaborations with Arild Andersen. The result is a gem that fulfils the role of sophisticated background music or wholly absorbing foreground music – there is no harsh disjunction when the music is backgrounded for iPod listeners as they attend to other tasks but it is also capable of yielding great charm when exposed to concentrated listening, so finding a function in people's lives that so much recorded jazz does not.