With their 2015 debut album The Day I Had Everything, Malija staked a big claim to being one of the front-running European acoustic trios with as much understanding of receptive listening as conversational playing. Polar Bear and Loose Tubes saxophonist Mark Lockheart remains the foreground voice, pianist Liam Noble and double bassist Jasper Høiby the attentive contrapuntal shadows who also stretch the music improvisationally way beyond its economically composed, scene-shifting hooks. The tonally refined Lockheart makes a handful of notes go a long way, floating conspiratorially murmuring tenor sounds over staccato piano and bass vamps (Kindred Spirit), noirish deep-sax prowlings on softly rocking hooks (Hung Up), and Wayne Shorteresque soprano musings against springy bass motifs that wrestle with jostling sub-themes (Mila). It’s a beautifully played and often very spontaneous three-way postbop/world-folk conversation, though the grippingly smoky tenor-sax dreamwalk Sanctuary, with its long tones, briefly flickering fills and minimally moving piano support, emphasises by contrast how unsettlingly restless some of Malija’s current thematic characters can be.
