There are plenty of syllables in the album title and a hint at contradiction. The massive seriousness and pensive nature of the album isn't a switch-off or paradoxical. Parts of what can be interpreted as an elegiac letting-go especially 'Beautiful Introvert' are incredibly fragile. A switch-on is the playfulness of the title track. This isn't, make no mistake, supposed to be a groove trio. And this factor makes it more time consuming - but ultimately more rewarding - than some releases that certainly are or happen to evolve into sacrificing abstraction at an altar built on riffs and the relentlessness of beat. By 'Peaceful Shift' Athina Kontou's bassistry is more pronounced and when it eases through you realise how shadowy the low end has been all along, a sketch that is now coloured in. Julia Kadel (born Berlin, 1986) is incredibly compelling - stylistically if you like Kris Davis you will feel comfortable in an allied edginess. There - another apparent contradiction, it's catching. Recorded at Berlin's Hansa Studios, drummer Devin Gray is painterly on 'Dependency Part 1,' a roiling, tumbling, sense of momentum allows a freedom to develop in the mood of the piece in dynamic response to Kadel. The pianist's vocals on 'Distant Liebe' are where my interest waned a bit but hardly spoil the considerable levels of intensity and abstraction achieved elsewhere. SG

Julia Kadel, photo: David Dollmann