In the days when the Arts Council were a much more active component of the UK jazz scene, they mounted a series of UK dates by this trio in 1991, and there was no doubting the then 34-year-old Gerri Allen’s star was in the ascendance.

Remarkably, there was no major label interest in her, or this trio, at that time, but thanks to the independent labels Soul Note and Black Saint in Italy, JMT in Germany and DIW in Japan, the trio was properly documented over their four-year lifetime.

By the time she recorded this second trio album, Allen had worked with a wide range of musicians from The Supremes and Mary Wilson, to Joseph Jarman, Dewey Redman and M-Base, and while her early recordings on Minor Music betrayed a range of stylistic influences that had not entirely been fully digested, and this was apparent on her first recording with Haden and Motian in 1988, Etudes, and this, their second album together.

Here, ’Oblivion’ reflects the influence of Bud Powell, it’s his composition after all; on Haden’s 12-bar blues ‘See You at Per Tutti’s’ it’s Monk that comes to the fore, while ‘Last Call,’ a time-no-changes piece, is fulfilled without achieving anything special. At this stage the group had not quite formed a collective identity and was a work in progress, with the best yet to come.