Towner is so deeply associated with ECM it's hard to imagine how his sound may otherwise have found expression in the world.

Extraordinarily, it's some 50 years since Towner's first solo release, Diary, yet with At First Light, many themes, tones and techniques resonate with those early recordings. There remains a fascination with the percussive virtues of the acoustic guitar, how fingers, nails and pick coax different struck responses; that may reflect some of the flamenco inflections in ‘Flow’ or ‘Strait’. It may be coherent too, with the parallels Towner finds between the piano and guitar: ‘Fat’ for example is replete with complex harmonies and passing runs that startle in their journey from light to dark and back again.

And always there is the sense of melody, whether in the lullaby waltz of ‘Ubi Sunt’ or the straight delivery of ‘Danny Boy’ (which is interesting to compare with Sco's solo recording). You could ask where's the challenge, the twist of something new in At First Light? But for fans maybe that's the point, that we have a familiarity, a sense of a coherent body of work from Towner and ECM that is deeply reassuring in a world of seemingly random unpredictability.