Glaswegian guitarist Jim Mullen recently reformed his quartet with Gareth Williams, Mick Hutton and Gary Husband for a Jazz Services-supported national tour. This album is another fruit of their reuniting, to supplement the earlier sets the group recorded in the period from 1996. Mullen says in his brief liner note, “as soon as we began rehearsing it was like picking up where we left off”; as that suggests, there's been no huge shift in the quartet's direction or sound. Mullen's mellow, bluesy six-string fl ow remains to the fore, although there's no sense of him hogging the limelight: Williams adds real lustre to the version of Thelonious Monk's ‘Bye Ya’. There are two arrangements of traditional tunes – ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’ and ‘The Lark’ – as well as a laidback, gently melancholy take on John Lennon's ‘Love Is Real’ and a busy, shuffl ing version of Pharaoh Sanders’ ‘Greetings to Idris.’ It's all executed with fine conversational ease, and is the sort of fl uent, sparkling musical banter that's always a pleasure to listen in to.