The opening title track shimmers like a glassy lake, with Juhani Aaltonen's sax smouldering in the embers of a lakeside campfire, before a gentle breeze carries forward the slightly more upbeat No Tears with some stunning piano from Lars Jansson. As twilight descends, Aaltonen switches to flute for the next three songs, all of them gorgeous beyond words, before the last and longest track goes back to sax. This finale, Dedication, gets a lot more firey than the rest thanks to the momentum Aaltonen gives it, but doesn't disturb the mood of the rest of the album - rather, it just balances it out perfectly. As if we hadn't heard enough of Andersen's bass mastery already, he takes a solo just before the end. For me, this is the absolute highlight of his discography. Essential peak ECM.
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