This release by Chris Speed's excellent trio with drummer Dave King and bassist Chris Tordini is in many ways Speed's most fully developed and personal work to date. Since arriving in New York in the early 1990's, he has become one of the most vital improvising musicians on the scene through work that has always ranged widely, moving from a jazz base out through various forms of folk, classical and rock music. With the formation of this trio Speed has reversed course: moving from these outer explorations back into something that is unquestionably jazz. What is most striking about this record is that the early jazz influences are now fully center stage. Instead of being one of a number of competing musical influences, some kind of feeling of the aesthetic of Lester Young is now at the center of everything. At a time when many jazz players are continuing to look further and further outside the tradition, this is a group returning from other explorations to work deep within the jazz tradition, bringing everything else they've learned back in. The resulting music is joyful and generous and Speed has an uncanny knack for coming up with tunes that can create a whole world behind an often catchy melodic surface.