Colin Vallon Trio: Ailleurs

The action amid a quasi-freeform and dirge-like spiritual passage during "Swing Low provides but a few of the many highlights here, where the band merely straddles the avant-garde schema. On "Robots, the musicians generate a systematic rhythmic ostinato that sounds like a whacked-out mechanical process.

Vallon's piano work is capacious, intriguing and deceptively complex. On "Mardi, he steers a push/pull motif atop an odd-metered pulse, sparking remembrances of Keith Jarrett's modern jazz-based boogie-woogie grooves. Nonetheless, Vallon and his rhythm section spin a distinctive cycle of events. The concepts that run throughout this program create a new and irrefutably charismatic aura. Saturated with neither effects nor cacophonic expressionism, Ailleurs professes a sense of oneness that hits home from the start.

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