Featuring the same classy young UK sextet that recorded his 2017 session Cross-Platform Interchange, and produced by the adventurous Jasper Høiby, Misha Mullov-Abbado's Dream Circus takes his cinematically colourful journey on, autobiographically charting his inner reflections and playing life of recent years. Mullov-Abbado joins a songwriter-like instinct for warmly folksy themes (somewhat reminiscent of his fellow bassist-composer Avishai Cohen) to a profound understanding of jazz's composing and arranging traditions, qualities that brought him the Kenny Wheeler Prize as a Royal Academy student.

Subtly implied by a rich solobass intro, the cannily delayed groove of the opening ‘Some Things Are Just So Simple’ draws patiently slow-spun tenor sax reflections from the excellent Sam Rapley (rather reminiscent of Tore Brunborg's work with Tord Gustavsen), and Mullov-Abbado's search for movement and adventure in the development of his music is palpable in the push and pull of individual and collective improv before the lilting theme's return. The Birth of the Cool-like floating harmonies of ‘Equinox’, cushioning James Davison's supple flugelhorn lines, is a highlight, ‘The Infamous Grouse’ splices a brittle, convoluted post-bop theme and uninhibited free-collective jamming, and the 11-minute ‘Seven Colours’ elegantly balances slowly-unfurled reeds and brass harmony and rhythmically jagged improv.

For all its exhilarating improv breakouts, this is contemporary jazz with a very firm hand on its tiller, but it's beautifully done – and Høiby's as-live production gives it a special zest.