On the face of it, a bass-trumpet pairing promises lots of aural space – between the trumpet's melody lines and the bass's underpinnings – but little variety. Till Brönner and Dieter Ilg, venturing into the recording studio for the first time as a duo, defy expectations by employing a few bits of technical wizardry (double-tracking, a treatment that makes Brönner's trumpet sound like a guitar on one occasion) but, just as importantly, by a really smart selection and sequencing of material, ranging from Leonard Cohen to Ornette Coleman and J.S. Bach. I've never considered myself a big Britney Spears fan, but it's hard not to be impressed by Brönner and Ilg's version of ‘Scream & Shout’, which Britney recorded with will.i.am. If the latter cover is an exemplary piece of contemporary jazz pop, unimpeachably airy and yet delivered with a bit of bite, it's immediately followed by an original, ‘Wetterstein’, which is a knot of twisty anxieties, before giving way to The Beatles' ‘Eleanor Rigby’. Intimate and austere, it's a set that's also full of invention and nocturnal wit.