Elan Mehler - Early Sunday Morning

Solo piano album by American pianist/composer Elan Mehler, who has been called disorienting and fascinating by MOJO magazine and a refreshingly slow answer to our trashy nanosecond pop culture by Time Out. Mehler was discovered by veteran DJ, broadcaster and label boss Gilles Peterson, who released three Mehler albums on his Brownswood Recordings label.

'Early Sunday Morning' contains a healthy dose of standards (Come Rain or Come Shine, Don't Explain, It Never Entered My Mind), a number of originals that have the lived-in confidence of the comfortable and worn, from the lovely Ophelia's Song that opens the record, to the infectiously angular Snakes of Coney Island, to the lilting, lyrical Abigail's Waltz. And of course there's the album's centrepiece, the four-part, disconnected suite Early Sunday Morning, which boasts a melody so twisting and haunting it recalls Blue-period Joni Mitchell.

Personnel: Elan Mehler (piano)