After three years and three albums springing from some fruitful partnerships (Benares, Paris and Mexico), Erik Truffaz has gone back to his old quartet. Close friend Benoît Corboz has taken up the keyboards formerly played by Patrick Muller, and brought his rigged Hammond organ and his Rhodes piano into the studio. Sophie Hunger, one of Erik’s Swiss compatriots, joined the musicians to record one of the compositions, Let me go! and a cover version of an obscure Bob Dylan number, Dirge. The slow, sad track that opens the album sets the tone for the whole opus. The secret of the dead sea, with its vocal and drum blend, unites the chantings of the Hammond organ with those of Truffaz’s trumpet. The musician explains: "The album is pretty sombre and sad. But we didn’t set out to do it that way. Each of us comes to the studio with more or less finished compositions and then we root out a sound together. It’s only afterwards that we discover the result.” The musician has dropped the electronic effects of yore and placed his new silver-incrusted instrument centre stage, producing an ampler sound that at times approaches the flute. It is the keyboards that provide the effects – dreamlike sounds, like on Mechanic Cosmetic, a track created from one of the quartet’s very modal improvisations. The more agitated Lost in Bogota, which the Rhodes piano turns almost funky, is a long way from the D&B rhythm of BC One, an ethereal tune created and dissected by Benoît Corboz. In Between prop