A longtime associate of Steve Coleman, trumpeter Finlayson’s two CDs to date, Moment And The Messsage and Moving Still, impressed. This is an assured third. While Finlayson can be seen as very much part of a contemporary New York sound in which a sense of harmonic and rhythmic complexity is prominent, there are nonetheless pleasingly strong signes particuliers in his approach. Standing in the lineage of a classic small group with a brass-two reed frontline, his sextet has an iron grip on fluttering, somersaulting unison lines that imbue songs with a fraught feeling, often enhanced by stark descents from pianist Mitchell. Pieces are tightly coiled around the Weinrib-Hebert drums-bass axis that alters smartly with each change of tempo and meter, but many of the interludes have a curt, almost baroque gravitas. Strong as he is on upbeat numbers, Finlayson also excels on poised, leisurely arrangements, as epitomised by the album’s highlight, ‘Refined Strut’, which wears its title well The leader’s gleaming tone, and caressing, yearning phrases place him in the lineage of great lyricists from Booker Little to Ron Miles, but the piece catches the ear by the way all this melodic warmth suffuses a rhythm that suggests Jamaican dub broken down into a series of very cleverly understated, stuttering rimshots. Finlayson has long been a soloist of note, but his growth as a composer is well to the fore on a record that builds a successful bridge between traditions and modernisms.