Behind the intriguing name Time Is A Blind Guide hides a collective driven by Thomas Strønen. With Lucus, the drummer and composer from Oslo offers a revised version of this acoustic band, in the reduced form of a quintet showcasing the Japanese pianist Ayumi Tanaka. She talks about her improvisation work as an attempt to create associative links between Japan and Norway, a trend that the Norwegian encourages throughout this record with a rather radiant orchestral writing that highlights a concrete sense of space. As in the first eponymous album of Time Is A Blind Guide released in 2015, you’ll find here deeply moving interventions by string experts, the quintet potentially including within itself both a string trio and a piano trio. By the finesse of his production, Manfred Eichner manages to transcribe every single detail of grain and texture of the band’s sound universe, notably seizing the oneiric halo of its harmonics in the exceptional acoustics of the Auditorio Stelio Molo in Lugano. It’s a sound that is one with this music that owes as much to jazz as it does to improvised music, to folklore and to classical music from the 20th century. Produced by Mr. ECM himself, Lucus gathers together Strønen and Tanaka, Håkon Aase on violin, Lucy Railton on violoncello and Ole Morten Vågan on double bass. © CM/Qobuz