The US-based French composer/improviser Simon Moullier once told DownBeat magazine that as a 17 year-old wannabe drummer on a Berklee College of Music summer camp, he had got fed up with waiting in the audition queue with a throng of his fellow percussionists, and so joined the small handful of contenders in the faster-moving vibraphonists’ line, and in that moment redrew his career. Thus saxophone legends have influenced Moullier’s phrasing much more than vibists, but his sources are as much in contemporary grooves and electronics as in the past.

Moullier’s fifth album Elements of Light opens with the breezily hook-cycling ‘808’ (built from a drum-machine loop), and ‘Pyramid Of The Sun’ unfolds a dreamy repeat over a soft backbeat showcasing fine pianist Lex Korten. Brisk hip-hoppish drum patterns propel Moullier and guest pianist Gerald Clayton on the title track, and ‘Lotus’ is a showcase for the luminously elegaic sound of Marquis Hill’s trumpet.

But Wayne Shorter’s ‘Oriental Folk Song’ is the standout, coaxing a stream of gracefully paced improvisations from Moullier and Korten. Longer exposures for the leader’s crisply-struck and sharply tonally-arresting improvisations would have been welcome on this sometimes overly smooth and recurrently ostinato-cycling album, but as an alchemist of fresh vibes sounds and engagingly classic-jazzy affections Simon Moullier always stands out.