‘The world of Ran Blake beckons once again in these performances and, once again, we cannot resist being drawn into that world. We dodge through its shadows and its bright, glaring expanses, alert to the caverns and crevices from which the pianist’s images emerge – now gentle, now brutal, always unretouched. The cinematic content of Blake’s music, its use of montage and dramatic dissolves, has long been acknowledged. When he works in the short forms he favours here, there is also the clarity and unsparing honesty of a short story collection by an author like the late Raymond Carver. Extra-musical allusions are unavoidable when music evokes all five senses, as Blake’s music inevitably does.’ Bob Blumenthal