Jazz
JonLloydMusic · ECN Music · 25 September 2026
“Winter Light” closes Anima at 10:54, nearly three minutes longer than anything else on the record. The solos are long and loose and the piece keeps changing phase until it has passed through three or four clearly separate states. It’s the one place where the quartet lets itself take up that much room, and it uses it.
“Build a Fire” (6:39) opens in a calm that turns into a long, lilting saxophone melody. John Law works his way in underneath until he finds the theme and then heads off into a solo that flows without hurrying. That’s the tone of much of the record: open space, few notes, and an awareness of silence that is what actually holds it together.
The quartet hasn’t changed since Earth Songs (Ubuntu, 2024): Jon Lloyd on tenor and soprano saxophones, John Law on piano, Nick Pini on double bass and Alex Goodyear on drums. All eleven compositions are Lloyd’s, and they lean toward folk and toward European classical music as much as toward jazz.
“Dancing” (8:09) starts with a cascading piano solo from Law and then opens out into a long soprano exploration. “Sheltering Sky” (5:05) puts Middle Eastern-inflected saxophone lines over Law’s piano and Goodyear’s urgency. And on “Southern Cross” (6:29) it’s Pini’s double bass lines that lead, over a lively rhythm.
Seventy-one minutes is a long time for a record working mainly in space and restraint, and the problem concentrates in the final stretch: “Priya” (7:03), “Altamira” (5:08) and “Closer” (5:24) run together and share a register, always spacious and always at half voice, so that by the time “Winter Light” arrives the ear has been asking for a change of temperature for some while and not getting it.
Eleven tracks, seventy-one and a half minutes, Lloyd’s own release distributed by ECN Music, 25 September.
Rating: 7.7/10
Text by Aina Torrents