Tom Arthurs/ Richard Fairhurst: Mesmer

This is a subtle and beautifully performed dialogue between two composer/improvisers, both of whom have been warmly received live - flugelhornist Tom Arthurs is a hot new ticket of the past year, and pianist Richard Fairhurst was enthusiastically cheered when he first appeared in the late 1990s. Mesmer, as the title implies, is music to put you in a trance without the process being apparent. It's mostly very quiet (Fairhurst plays the opening Beautiful Indifference like the tinkle of a music box, and the title track features Arthurs' flugelhorn sighing softly over just the merest dab from the piano), but the melodies are sparingly insistent, and every sound has a refinement that camouflages the spontaneity that released it. Arthurs can disguise the flugelhorn from even resembling a brass instrument at times, but the melodically audacious yet jazzy phrasing of Kenny Wheeler (probably his primary influence) often surfaces, and the fast, jittery Anguilla - like a rolling Keith Jarrett piano vamp with a Django Bates melody on top - buzzes with energy. In fact, there's energy in all of it, but you have to listen closely.