French tenor saxophonist Bordenave delves deep into a key chapter of jazz history that has a particular relevance to ECM: the music made in the early 1960s by the magical trio of Jimmy Giuffre, Steve Swallow and Paul Bley was reissued in the early 1990s by the German label, which rarely licenses music from other sources.

In any case Bordenave uses the model wisely, for his original compositions fully uphold the spirit of such forward-looking music without blind pastiche. While the faraway, misty, hazy character of the work is familiar – as if the sounds were drifting across the stillest of waters – Bordenave has brought a personal slant to that imagery, carving a niche somewhere between scored sanctified song and improvised abstraction. In any case he is playing tenor rather than clarinet as Giuffre did, and draws a touchingly vaporous tone from the instrument, but also opts to add a touch more weight from time to time.

His accompanists, pianist Florian Weber and bassist Patrice Moret, strike a balance between understatement and propulsion, so that all the overlapping melodies do not become too static. As serene and meditative as this music may be it also has bursts, or rather notable flickers of energy and bold, focused, fluid movement, invigorating all the atmospheric counterpoint. Giuffre may be a clear template but another ECM icon, Charles Lloyd, also skips onto Bordenave's wistful musical landscape, adding a forest flower to what is a quite graceful river of sound.