By 1975, the New York guitarist John Abercrombie was escaping the fusion-virtuoso stereotype he had acquired with Billy Cobham’s band and jazz-rock pioneers Dreams, and had made two fine jazz albums for ECM – Timeless, under his own name, and Gateway, for Jack DeJohnette’s trio with Dave Holland. Night, recorded in New York almost a decade later, smartly joined both persuasions, with DeJohnette at the drums, Jan Hammer from the former Cobham group on keys, and sometime Dreams sideman Mike Brecker on tenor. The result is an engaging balance of unambiguous grooving (not always a characteristic of Abercrombie’s later work) and a more ECM-nuanced agenda of folk melody, tonal delicacy, and intricate improv. All the compositions are Abercrombie’s save for Hammer’s vivacious ‘Ethereggae’, a coolly sidelong and then reggae-chugging dance on which the guitarist is spacily loose and Brecker uncorks a torrent of soul-sax sprints. The title-track is a smokily melancholy mood-piece, ‘3 East’, a triplet-structured folk theme that shifts in and out of hustling swing, ‘Look Around’ a mix of waltzing understatement (with some Wes Montgomery glimpses from Abercrombie) and organ-bashing blues. The tumbling, Ornette-ish ‘Four On One’ takes this virtuoso quartet to the edge of free jazz. Fans of the late-lamented Abercrombie won’t be surprised by how resourceful his melodic imagination is here, but might raise a startled eyebrow at how fearlessly wild some of this welcomely reissued music is.