Andy Sheppard/Michel Benita/Seb Rochford - Trio Libero (ECM 2012)

Saxophonist Andy Sheppard, drummer Seb Rochford and French bassist Michel Benita – the European acoustic-improv supergroup Trio Libero – delivered a captivating blend of casual Latin shuffling, underplayed electronics and Scandinavian-sax ambience at Ronnie Scott's last year. But it was a different band to the one that recorded this set five months later in Lugano. It's as full of melody, character and spontaneous empathy as the gigs, but this music is slower and softer, a masterclass in imparting ambiguity and depth to the smallest sounds – and a remarkable demonstration of how the catchiness of a pop song can be imparted to a tone poem that seems to barely rise above a murmur. The opening Libertino, a typically light-stepping Sheppard melody, somehow manages to create the idea of a witty lament. Wispy tenor-sax fragments turn into quiet snare-drum tattoos peppered with sonorous tom-tom accents. A single standard (I'm Always Chasing Rainbows) is a Jan Garbarek-like soprano sax drifter quietly prodded and pulled by Benita's bass. The long-note and bowed-bass Spacewalk Parts 1 and 2 have a pristine, shivery beauty, and the closing When We Live on the Stars has a slow and sonorous pop song quality. It's low-key, but glowing with life.
John Fordham/guardian.co.uk