Touching on both Cole Porter and Eric Garner, this long-time trio invigorate bop with thrilling, socially conscious free jazz.

The album is aptly titled – Iyer is a clean, lyrical pianist, yet his compositions have a stormy undertow which Sorey and Oh expertly draw out. The music develops through collective improvisation, but it’s supremely focused and tight. These formal qualities are combined with a keen political edge.

These grade-A players cohere impressively on what is a session that pushes the vocabulary of previous releases such as Historicity and Break Stuff further down a personal evolutionary road. Iyer’s originals, particularly ‘Children Of Flint’ and ‘Combat Breathing’, both of which address abhorrent injustice in America, are impressive insofar as they evoke vivid moods by way of arrangements in which the rhythmic energy is tightly gripped, if not contained and off-grid melodic motifs are imbued with the gravitas associated with such as Randy Weston or Abdullah Ibrahim. The fire crackles rather than rages.

Even as they negotiate complex parameters of rhythm and harmony, the trio’s expertly attuned playing evokes the openness of improvisation and the urgency of justice.