A highly respected sideman to the likes of Vijay Iyer and Steve Lehman, Sorey has been steadily building a body of strong work as a composer where he shows a side of his character that is markedly different to that which he exhibits with the aforesaid artists. His polyrhythmic excellence and unerring, pneumatic drive on the drums give way to a performance of focused restraint and precision as a conductor, conceptualist and multi-instrumentalist on this opus, where the incremental, almost glacial, progress of sound is the order of the day. Sorey’s avowed interest in Zen Buddhism has surfaced on previous recordings such as Koan and here he takes the principle of meditation one step further, with each of three discs coming across almost as grandiose, slow moving flotillas where harmonies ripple tantalisingly out of silence, and a single timbre, above all Stephen Haynes’ maudlin hark on the trumpet, becomes an episode in itself. Sorey’s aim is tantamount to capturing motifs in mid-air, with an attendant ambience that is extremely understated. In a world where successions of notes and attention-seeking noise are prevalent in many genres of music this is a bold strategy fraught with risk. It takes several sittings to immerse oneself in such an environment devoid of clear, or at least conventional, signposts. The allusive can be a touch too elusive, yet the beauty by austerity, if not severity, is hard to dismiss when the piercing of brass or guitar cushioned by a distant voice or melodica has a deeply satisfying emotional tenor that is anything but overly familiar. Demanding, beguiling, rewarding.