Jakob Bro, you will be astonished to learn, is not Eddie Van Halen. The Danish jazz guitarist engages in atmospherics, not histrionics; his playing is like the shimmering whispering of a sparkler deep in a dark, silent wood on Bonfire Night, rather than a noisy firework display in a stadium on the fourth of July. This beguiling disc is Bro’s first live release, recorded over two nights at New York’s Jazz Standard in 2017 with the same rhythm section that accompanied him on the previous year’s Streams: drummer Joey Baron and double-bassist Thomas Morgan, peerlessly sensitive interpreters of the repertoire, which is made up entirely of Bro originals and which will for the most part be familiar to regular followers. The sound is profoundly meditative in character – it’s on ECM, after all – and achieves maximum intensity on the contemplatively turbulent ‘Dug’; ‘Evening Song’ is a pretty ballad with a wrinkle in its brow; while ‘Mild’ is so good it features twice, first as the set opener, then in softly (let’s not say mildly) differing form as the closer.