Young drummer-composer Olivier Chavet’s Belgian-German quintet debut is titled Racines, translated from the French as ‘roots’. Chavet is a trained agriculturalist and you might wonder why that’s talked about in a jazz review, but the track titles and the corresponding overhead image on the CD sleeve of him sitting at his kit in a green field resonate vaguely with a message about our relationship with the land.

As does the harmonious, largely pastoral quality of the music here. Chavet gradually introduces his ensemble’s soloists and they make impressive contributions: Heidi Bayer edgily yearning flugelhorn, the pianist Sebastian Scobel, who’s both lyrically and stylistically in the Esbjörn Svensson mould, and his guitarist brother Daniel with his perfectly poised bluesy-rock soundworld.

Chavet’s compositions are breezily simplistic, and ones you wouldn’t mind hearing again and again. If you’re not in the mood though, interest starts to wane during the latter half as the band drift into a sleepy middle-of-the-road Euro-jazz ambience at which point perhaps more of the rhythmic impetus of jazz than the influence of acoustic rock-pop and chanson would add interest.

Yet the rhythm section sounds pleasantly unpretentious throughout, and the easy interaction of melodic ideas between soloists is one of quite a few strong points on a promising debut.