Merritt, Turville and the Fishwicks formed this quintet as far back as 2014 out of a desire to ‘write music for musicians you are inspired by’ as Merritt puts it. Turville, in turn explains the album’s title as a way of illustrating their desire ‘to work towards a collective contemporary jazz aesthetic’ describing how ‘thought becomes sound and the ladder that must inevitably be climbed’. Oh well.

The co-leaders contribute the bulk of the nine pieces with just one by the excellent Turville, the relatively sombre ‘UHDC’ followed by Merritt’s ‘Pablo-ish’, influenced by his interest in German pianist Pablo Held, its harmonic structure a challenge, the final passages quite free. Steve’s ‘Hollow Man’ slips and slides, the melodic shape hinting at boppish complexity, his trumpet attack quite oblique. His ‘Dr. Wu, What’s Wrong With You’ opens with declamatory phrases, Steve exploring his higher register in his now customary elusive fashion. Merritt’s ‘Ma Ballade’ dedicated to his mother, is stately, lustrous chorded figures unfolding gradually, his pre-Coltrane tenor fragmentary, his solo emerging neatly.

Thereafter, his ‘At Saint George’s’ verges on the straight-ahead, the opening figures prompting some reflective tenor before Steve sidles in, and Turville solos nimbly, building momentum. He excels again on the final ‘New Waltz’, reverential almost, certainly solemn, as is Merritt himself. The saxophonist’s note details the harmonic basis and the often classical impetus for some of these quite diverse pieces. A work in progress, I suggest, given the material and these outcomes. More to come, undoubtedly.