Highly commercially-angled jazz radio stations won't be playing 'Subaqueous Silence' in their typically jolly breakfast slots. It's not that kind of track.

Avant-garde and serious this taster from the album of the same name to be released by ECM at the end of October with no fixed beat and a slow largo atmosphere does not lend itself to any throwaway situation that builds to the weather, traffic reports, jingles and ads for pensions. It's more a concert hall in a temple of culture kind of sound, every semi-breve carefully plucked up from the reluctant silence.

Japanese pianist Ayumi Tanaka who lives in Norway made a firm impression on the fine Thomas Strønen album Bayou earlier in 2021.

The improviser, who began on organ as a child, is here with bassist Christian Meaas Svendsen and the much better known drummer Per Oddvar Johansen familiar from his work with Helge Lien.

Tanaka has a very original sound in the sparse and weighty avant-garde traditions of the Masabumi Kikuchi-like world compellingly entered into. Photo: Tore Sætre