Label: Intakt Records, 2019

Personnel - Chris Speed: tenor sax; Chris Tordini: bass; Dave King: drums.

Respect For Your Toughness, the third outing for the trio of saxophonist Chris Speed, possesses a distinctive blend of energy and perspicuity, being a winning collection of nine well-written and deftly played originals (all by Speed) plus a low-key rendition of Kay Swift’s standard “Can This Be Love?”. It’s precisely this latter piece, delicately shrouded in Speed’s relaxed tone, that opens up the album. A sense of flimsiness is brought by sequences of notes peacefully aligned with enough air circulating between them to let us have a virtual perception of space. Also sharing this frame of mind, “Faint Tune” languishes in a graceful fragility with the coruscant brushwork of The Bad Plus’ drummer Dave King keeping the torch permanently lit.

The drummer is meticulously creative on “Attention Flaws”, reinventing himself with a magnetic rhythm that goes well with the percussive, stout bass attacks of Chris Tordini. Limned with a soulful touch, the melody of this specific tune is such a beauty to hear.

Instigated by the priceless legacy of Coltrane and Ornette, “Helicopter Lineman” swings as much as it rocks, while “Casa Adela” pivots on folksy melodies and animated rim activity, devising an Afro-Caribbean rhythm that enhances our mental capacity to picture warm landscapes. Here, Tordini delivers a concise bass solo that is veiled by its own robustness.

Garnished with brave, risky grooves and a strong command of dynamics, we have the prayerful title track and the staggering “Strobe Dots”. The former, played at 5/4 tempo, has both the groove and the saxophone invocations casting a hypnotic spell; while the latter is assembled with meter-shifting passages, deliberately rocking in a way that you can dance to it. Even when side slipping, Speed is never aggressive; just quite enough astringent to make his silvery arcs sound gorgeously abstract.

Speed, Tordini and King are formidable together. Their excellent, disciplined teamwork spawned another record with consistent high quality.