Three rings on a singing bowl, and Altera Vita unfurls slowly, languorously, into being, a sonic lotus flower in a spiritual jazz garden planted by the likes of Pharoah Sanders and Alice and John Coltrane.

This spare, superb duo album might have come from on high, such is its soul-cleansing timeliness, the way it transfixes the listener across six tracks whose intentions, spelled out after opener 'Tabula Rasa: Blank Slate', are titled like offerings (‘Anima: Breathe’; ‘Audite Me: Hear Me’).

The symbiosis between harpist Bzhezhinska and tenor king Kofi has long been clear to all who've experienced their previous collaborations, most notably with the former's HipHarp Collective. But this recording takes both further. Laid down over two fecund days at London's Fish Factory Studios, Altera Vita sparkles with the sort of improvisational magic expected of players at the top of their game, with passages changing form, finding flow, conjuring shapes and angles, in ways surprising, soothing, thoughtful and rousing.

The harp's percussive prowess is echoed by details from chimes, bowls and kalimba thumb piano, and the instrument is determinedly presented on a par with the sax - which weaves golden lines through the more meditative string passages (deftly enhanced by tanpura drone on 'Audite Me') while delivering sunbursts of power on the eponymous closer, a Kofi-penned homage to Sanders involving elegant call-and-response. Astral travelling indeed.