The classy chamber-trio lineup that made ECM's 2016 release, The Bell – Ches Smith, Mat Maneri and Craig Taborn – has expanded to a quartet with the addition of guitarist Bill Frisell. Smith's spur for this project was a musical meditation on a minimalist pen-and-ink sketch by New York artist Raymond Pettibon, particularly its enigmatic written invitation to 'Interpret it well'.

The drawing is classic art Americana – a single railway track disappearing to the horizon, three telegraph poles, a distant building, but also a disturbed flurry of lines in the sky, which could be a tornado or a plume of threatening smoke – triggers to an observer's imagination that Smith feels an affinity with in his own understated yet eerily inescapable guidance to improvisers.

The set is enclosed by brief opening and closing tracks, and the long title piece begins as fragile, barely-struck vibes sounds, gradually gathered together by Maneri's hypnotically slow-bowed tones, until slurs and gleams from Frisell's guitar add a bluesy edge. A staccato Taborn piano break tightens gradually to a hook, before Smith's drums drive the piece to a wailing climactic thrash. 'Mixed Metaphor' un-folds in a watchful partnership of twisting guitar fragments and thickening viola chords before the emergence of a backbeat and another powerful groove, while 'Morbid' is a spellbinding abstract-ballad exploration of soft sounds, harmonics, and cymbal swishes. 'Clear Major' and 'I Need More' are episodic voyages from brood-ing vamps to ingeniously urgent soloing, dreamy delicacy and subtly catchy motifs. The busy separate schedules of these four players makes regular get-togethers on Ches Smith's ventures inevitably rare, so Interpret It Well is a particularly precious document.