Known for his enduring work with the singular Magnetic North Orchestra and Batagraph or earlier as a member of the innovative Masquelero and the Arild Andersen quartet, the pianist Jon Balke is currently investigating solo piano that also involves a sideways integration of sound processing. It's a format he explored on his 2016 ECM release Warp and now again for new release Discourses. As the title suggests, the focus is on the need for more open discussion. Says Balke: “As the political climate hardened in 2019 with more and more polarized speech, the lack of dialogue pointed me towards the terms that constitute the titles for the tracks.” Things have changed radically since December when the recording was conceived, but sadly Balke's stance is reflected in the current climate in which confrontational rhetoric and intolerance is still prevalent. The 16 vignettes, averaging at about two and a half minutes each, evolve organically with dreamy broken chords (‘The Container’ is particularly lovely), quick-fire bubbling motifs, gentle flurries of note clusters, playfully percussive prepared piano and thick celestial chords that retain a grounding in early as well as later forms of jazz and classical harmony. A certain logic paralleling the titles is applied musically but it doesn't get in the way of Balke's statically poised brand of lyricism. As on Warp, the sound design extras assume an enigmatic quality: floating understatedly and eerily in the sonic stratosphere neither fully committed to commentating on or integrating with Balke's piano narrative. An involving venture, if given the time and effort, that's perched musically and conceptually somewhere between inner reflection and playful objectivity.