Trumpeter Akinmusire has proved impressively versatile during his 15-year career and he follows 2023’s excellent trio session Owl Song with a set that could not be more sonically different. The pared down brass-guitar-drums format of the previous offering is replaced by a much more layered palette which ties together synthesizers, drums, spoken word and strings around the leader’s often plaintive horn. Inspired by the emblematic composer Julius Eastman, who greatly challenged received wisdoms on minimalism as well as African-American culture, honey from a winter stone is also a compelling vehicle for Akinmusire’s own deeply personal reflections on masculinity and identity in a racially divided world. No song epitomises this more than the epic ‘muffled screams’, a hauntingly glacial soundscape that gradually cracks its way out of stillness to hit a peak of energy through the outstanding extempo poetry of Kokayi over tremulous keys and bulging sub-bass that are ‘phat’ but not overly dense. The predominantly fraught nature of the music makes it a loose sequel to 2018’s daring Origami Harvest but Akinmusire’s ensemble steers into intriguing waters where taut improvisation, challenging narration and understated but effective electro-pop cohere in a sound that is emphatically and provocatively contemporary.