KALI Trio, The Playful Abstract, Ronin Rhythm ***

It may have been recorded at a studio in Winterthur called Suburban Sound.

But there’s nothing remotely suburban about The Playful Abstract.

That said there’s not a lot of jazz to climb every mountain to.

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But certainly the approach is jazz adjacent unless you are of the moldy fig persuasion and far rather prefer an outbreak of toe tapping with your muesli to which the TINA principle of harrumphingly cantankerous dogma applies – there is no alternative.

KALI Trio – as much a hip modern architectural practice, capable of designing a sleek clutter free chalet inside an obliging waterfall, as a band – don’t give a fig about such arcane notions as swinging.

Instead it’s a lot more road ready Tangerine Dream and prog in nature.

But KALI Trio aren’t hung up on being doctrinaire or preposterously pretentious although some might feel they give it a good go in the more generously spacey passages of their sonic blueprint.

Comprising composed and improvised material, the trio – from Switzerland – are drummer Nicolas Stocker, known for his work with the Nik Bärtsch Mobile Ensemble, guitarist Urs Müller and pianist Raphael Loher who is from Lucerne. The album is issued on the label of gnomic zen jazz grand fromage, Bärtsch.

It’s an outfit that began in 2015 – this album arrives four years on from Loom. Stocker used rototoms, tuned percussion, contact microphones, e-kalimba, sub e-kalimba (no me, neither) and electronics.

Müller preferred a large pedalboard to alter his guitar sound. And as for Loher’s concept of prepared piano – this involved use inside the piano of magnets, kneaded erasers and even meditation balls. But of course.

Opening track ‘Organelle’ is named after a synthesiser – not a kind of rather more-ish ingestible fungus in case the thought trespassed into your consciousness. Verdict then? I kind of liked it. It’s pretty mindful. The album – not at all one made recorded into an iPhone over a collective sarnie in the space of their superKalifragilisticexpialidocious lunch break one quiet Tuesday. After all it took a whopping 10 days just to mix. Nobody is rushing about much in Winterthur.