Not that he needs to convince those who have been paying attention for over two decades, but Jeff Parker strengthens his claim to modern guitar hero status by way of a couple of very different works; between them they serve notice that the 55-year-old Chicagoan-Angeleno is such an important exponent of his instrument because he has reached the stage of his development where he can self-edit with the rigorous judgment of a composer aware of the arc of a performance as well as an improviser with the right flourish to enhance it.

Eastside Romp, the trio session with Nasheet Waits and Eric Revis, is a tightly-focused affair, in which not a single second of the 37 minutes of music is redundant. The band excels on spare, floating rhythms in which concise motifs are given perceptible emotional peaks by Parker's softening and hardening of tone, recalling Hungarian maestro Gabor Szabo in addition to American legend Jim Hall.

Parker's use of pedals also expands the sonic palette by way of jagged edges of reverb and ghostly chorusing, which imbues the songs with a gentle strangeness, a leftfield lyricism.

Mondays… sees Parker's quartet crank up to high level intensity in what is a small pressure cooker of a venue in Los Angeles. The drums and bass axis – Jay Bellerose and Anna Butterss – works impressively, but the presence of Josh Johnson's saxophone is vital insofar as it provides a highly effective element of both convergence and counterpoint to Parker's guitar. The two instruments hover and flutter around each other, making effective harmonic shifts when necessary and settling into wiry ostinatos at just the opportune moment. But the airy beauty created is given greater relief by the granite of Bellerose-Butterss's backbeat, which often drags just behind the pulse to subtle but notable effect.

Parker's organic integration of hip-hop sits well with the abstractions in sound, from sizzling distortion to wavering flange and glassy echo; this pair of releases, on the back of 2020's Suite For Max Brown, shows that he has reached a creative peak.