In an interview with writer and ECM chronicler Steve Lake, the young Norwegian saxophonist, composer and multi-media artist Mette Henriette Rølvåg – better known across various creative disciplines as just plain Mette Henriette – once offered a fascinating glimpse of the sources of her delicately impressionistic music. "I think about a lot of other things," she said. "I imagine scenes, or scents…it's more interesting than the obvious things, like focusing on scales."

Drifting represents that concentrated focus on the passing moment even more revealingly – and dynamically – than its ECM predecessor, her eponymous 2016 debut for the label. Mette is joined on this belated follow-up by long-time piano partner Johan Lindvall, and by Australian cellist/composer Judith Hamann, a contemporary-music explorer just as independently driven as she is.

Over 15 short pieces, the trio devote some haiku-like reflections to the voicings of a single chord or a series of modulations (‘The 7th′, or the title track), the textures of other instruments, or the sounds of creaking trees, birds’ wings, or icy winds. She's distantly Garbarek-like over the fast-moving ensemble patterns of ‘I Villvind’. ‘Rue de Renard’ begins in a smoky cello/sax unison and hypnotically develops as a slow dance around a tonal centre; Indrifting You’ illuminates Lindvall's restrained role in propelling a gathering rhythmic sway; ‘Crescent’ is a softly lilting tenor theme closely shadowed by the piano and underpinned by deep cello chords. Drifting may remind you of a dream, or an embrace, or a preoccupied woodland wander a lot more than a wild bop-blasting night in a jazz club, but that's what the unique Mette Henriette is all about.