Mercifully brief, mercifully given that repetition while necessary is often very dull when wrung out over 9 or 10 minues and even more so if an improviser is trying but failing to pluck inspiration from the lint of their lapels. There is nothing repetitive or lacking in inspiration here. The John Cage loving pianist and composer Steve Beresford would perhaps be the first to say he's not, as he would put it half self-mockingly, ''up'' to playing jazz. Of course he can and does play it but there be dragons. Because it is a peculiarly English thing that goes back to the fork in the road hewn out of breeze blocks in the 1970s that points, arrow right, to free-jazz and, left, at the crossroads where the braziers are lit and constantly stoked to ''total'' improvisation. Some see the two as different, some the same. To use adjectives when speaking of abstract music is bizarre but we all do it. And so 'Elastic Articles' is balladic, serene and glacial. Beresford does not roam far on the piano, the low detonations are the yin to the yang of the almost serialist sounding rows his right hand finds and that linger beautifully. From the various artists compilation ZZAJ - Jazz From The 23rd Century out now.

• MORE READING: Pianos, Toys, Music and Noise: Conversations with Steve Beresford