One of ECM’s current Touchstones reissues celebrating their 50th anniversary, this actually predates the formation of the label by a couple of years. Apparently produced by Bley himself (he later released other material from the same period on his own IAI label), it was presumably offered to ECM as a follow-up to the even earlier Paul Bley with Gary Peacock (ECM 1003) – and it would be fascinating to know if [label boss] Eicher selected the three Annette Peacock tunes on Ballads to match the label’s emerging aesthetic. In fact, the word ‘tunes’ seems a bit of a misnomer for, with the exception of the brief piano-and-bass version of ‘Circles’, their clear melodic impulses are taken to very abstract places by the trio. But, despite the considerable activity of Altschul and the theoretically discordant piano gestures, it’s all taken very slow and indeed out-of-tempo. So the net result is easy to listen to, though definitely not ‘easy-listening’.