The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Further Out (Miro Reflections)

Where Time Out asked the question, Time Further Out pressed deeper into the answer. Released in November 1961 on Columbia Records, the Dave Brubeck Quartet's follow-up to their landmark 1959 album continued their fearless exploration of unusual time signatures, this time with an added conceptual dimension: the album was conceived as a jazz interpretation of the work of Spanish surrealist painter Joan Miro, giving the music an abstract, painterly quality that rewards careful listening.

The classic quartet lineup of Brubeck on piano, Paul Desmond on alto saxophone, Eugene Wright on bass, and Joe Morello on drums is as tight and intuitive as ever. The tracks are arranged in order of beats per bar, moving through time signatures from 3/4 to 9/8 in a sequence that feels both intellectually rigorous and completely natural in the listening. Hypnotic, melodic, and quietly inventive, the album achieves the same balance of accessibility and ambition that made Time Out such an unlikely phenomenon.

For anyone who discovered the Dave Brubeck Quartet through Time Out and has not yet made the journey here, Time Further Out is the essential next step. A brilliant album from one of jazz's most enduring and adventurous groups.