This album challenges perceptions and assumptions in many ways. Drummer-composer Andrew Cyrille may be seen first and foremost as an avant-garde legend whose career has many historic moments, such as recordings for BYG and work with icons like Cecil Taylor, yet he is also a master storyteller beyond genre definitions.

Cyrille’s often painterly textural invention has always been outstanding, and here he shows a consummate command of low tempo on daringly spacious, sparse material where he chooses every strike of snare or crash of ride cymbal with the utmost care, as if the notes were punctuation in a letter or exclamation marks in an intimate conversation. The entwining lines of Bill Frisell’s guitar and David Virelles’s keyboards significantly enhance what is a prevailing dream-state ambiance, reminding us that there are ways of upholding and extending the ballad tradition that can edge towards often minimal sounds that are very different to a patented minimalist composer’s vocabulary.

The gorgeous strains of ‘Go Happy Lucky’ reveal the advanced subtleties of the ensemble, where at times the sotto voce statements shift lithely around light and dark moods, achieving a lyricism that has a questioning if not ambiguous character. Having said that the album’s closer ‘With You In Mind’ is a piece of spoken word by Cyrille in which he pays tribute to his paramour, and it is satisfying to hear the great octogenarian’s voice alongside his stellar work on the kit.