Vijay Iyer’s latest trio made its studio debut, Uneasy in 2021, and played an outstanding gig at the London jazz festival the following year, emphatically showing the band was in the creative ascendant. This new album confirms as much. The collegiate skill and advanced musicianship of pianist Iyer, double bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey are asserted without any individual dominating proceedings.

This is a kind of pure trio music then, a three-into-one and one-from-three modus operandi, partly due to the great strength of character of each player, partly due to the democratic, egalitarian nature of the material, none more so than the title track, which gently flows and ripples over a calm, supple beat, so that each hiss of cymbals, purr of bass and skim on the keyboard is heard with clarity. Yet everything blends into a deeply expressive whole.

At the other end of the spectrum the harder, tougher, more muscular sounds of ‘Tempest’ and ‘Ghostrumental’ serve as an all-important reminder of a strong allegiance to the danceable ways of funk and hip-hop, with the latter song in particular having an intriguingly understated yet rousing gospel implication. The set also nods to Iyer’s beginnings through a fine cover of ‘Nonaah,’ a classic piece by AEC legend Roscoe Mitchell, with whom the pianist toured in his formative years. The student has become a master.