Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace can be seen and heard as a conceptual rejoinder to Afrikan Culture. That album marked the studio debut of Shabaka Hutchings as a flautist and he also plays the instrument on this set, but the titles create continuity of sorts as we are invited to reflect on the bounty of the Motherland.

An international cast of renowned musicians, with the likes of Jason Moran and Nduduzu Makathini in the piano chair alone, is used in a wide variety of configurations. The result is some of the most meditative music Hutchings has made in his career to date, with the focused restraint, if not containment of the players leading to a very collective kind of creation whereby it feels as if all the sounds are sensually floating on a single sound cloud that has clear Afro-Asian or ‘nature music’ implications. Not that there isn’t individual nuance or flourish. In situations where understatement is at a premium the superior touch of Moran on the keyboard, or the heavenly voices of Moses Sumney and Eska make a difference. An intriguing blend of influences and ideas that is well helmed by Hutchings’s artfully low warm and breathy flute lines.