The influential New Jersey drummer Mark Guiliana, who first turned heads during his five-year stint with star bassist Avishai Cohen's acoustic trio during the noughties, turned his attention to electronica in his BEAT MUSIC project before deciding to reconnect with his acoustic jazz roots in 2015, forming this all-acoustic quartet, and pledged to record entirely ‘live’ in the studio.

The tracks on their fourth album Mischief come out of the same recording session as the sound of listening released last year also on the Edition label. If that raises suspicions that the tracks here weren’t good enough to make the selection on the first album, it’s evidently not the case. Although this might form a more fragmentary whole than last year’s track selection, it’s perhaps curiously a more warmly engaging listen.

In spite of being filtered through Guiliana’s transformative 21st century music sensibility, part of its appeal is down to its stronger alliance with the roots-y jazz eras of soul-jazz and free-bop. There’s also some well-oiled high-quality playing all-round that’s backed up with Guiliana’s usual pristine contemporary studio sound.

On the delightful Chris Potter-ish title track, the highly impressive ECM-signed, fellow ex-Avishai Cohen pianist Shai Maestro steadily develops middle-eastern flecked melodies underpinned by Guiliana’s painterly percussion and Chris Morrissey’s watery bass; Guiliana words ‘We’re gonna keep on playing until the tape runs out” on the next track clearly signals an outtake not meant for the finished edit, but the band’s spontaneous launch into a crisply swinging free-ish number makes it a nice touch all the same while a straightahead take on US children’s TV presenter Fred Rogers’ ‘When the Day Turns into Night’ features Jason Rigby’s succulently lyrical Wayne Marsh-ish tenor.

That Guiliana’s quartet can make something pretty old-school sound like a breath of fresh air is something that deserves more credit than it usually receives.