The Polish jazz scene is one of the most advanced in Europe and paved the way futurewards out of the catacombs when the nation lay in rubble after the devastation of the second world war and the subsequent cruelty of Moscow before the Khrushchev thaw that eventually the Poles overthrew decades later thanks to that great Polish patriot Lech Wałęsa. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of jazz in Poland knows all the above.

A new generation of players still possesses the ability to stimulate in the face of dark socially conservative forces at home, they are like painters as the great film makers in Poland after the second world war had been and who first loved jazz and often used it in their films as a motif of freedom.

The beacons of light of Komeda (referenced here all over the album quietly stunning on the beautiful 'Sleep Safe and Warm') and Tomasz Stańko always burn bright and cast a giant shadow urging creativity and a journey to the inner truth as Coltrane and Miles Davis did in their own ways.

Wojtek Mazolewski stands on the shoulders of giants, the double bassist leader's sound a very romantic heart on sleeve approach (think the approach of Jacek Niedziela a bit, certainly his technique is up there with that revered but little known beyond his native land Polish bassist). The sheen of Joanna Duda particularly on Wurlitzer is a poetic presence amid the hum and quiet riot of the instrument's oscillations.

Oskar Torok's trumpet sound takes up the baton drawing deep from the well of players who once were young lions such as the more mainstream Piotr Wojtasik-type approach and yet retains the rich sonority of that sound while stripping it of nostalgia and twee paraphrase.

Marek Pospieszalski on tenor I suppose is the beating heart of what is a wonderful album and he operates in the mind's eye reminiscent of Tomasz Szukalski or in Komeda terms but probably less so given his different tone the way Bernt Rosengren's sound informed Knife in the Water but again he is not stuck in the past and sits more alongside the sound of Maciej Obara who was superb last year on Three Crowns.

'Roman II' takes the album more free form and in case we all forget the Jazz Darings in Poland (contemporaneous with what Joe Harriott in the UK was doing) were some of the first to respond to Ornette Coleman's revolution in sound as Stańko who was in that band with Adam Makowicz reminded me on many occasions. Stańko loved Ornette's sound and changed the face of Polish jazz throughout his career building on the freedom and the abstraction and shaping of it via the lens of his own aesthetic. Oba Janicki brings a quirky theatricality on drums to 'Roman II' and he can dazzle uptempo or just loll about. Recorded at the Polish Radio Studio in Warsaw just under a year ago, the words of Adam Mickiewicz spring to mind because they also conjure Komeda somehow: ''Whoever comes to me, will be free and equal, because I am freedom.'' SG