Canadian bassist Zach Lober is a sideman of repute and he makes his debut fronting a new Amsterdam-based trio that features the young Korean drummer Sun Mi-Hong, whose album Third Page: Resonance made quite a splash on its release last year. No Fill3r is made up of Lober originals with a writing contribution from his side-women and a brief, entirely free, improvisation on the title track.

Lober tends to like his ensembles raw and lean, as his co-led quartet Landline's recording from 2021 demonstrated, and this bare-boned trumpet-bass-drums trio, recorded ‘live’ in the studio, is another step in that direction, without any filler as the title says.

While a closely-knit collective ethos is evident, Lober also makes space for all three to create distinctive individual moments too, a couple of them unaccompanied. Among Lober's writing inspirations are the likes of Paul Bley and Jimmy Guiffre while trumpeter Veneman's spaciously succinct phrasing and slightly sour, smeared tone embraces both Miles and Don Cherry, and is articulate and cohesive if not very characterful. It's the close interweave of Lober's drums and Veneman's trumpet with Hong's painterly percussive work however that will broaden the recording's appeal.