Jazz Saxophonist David Murray's career has been a story of wide-ranging musical interests and relentless productivity. Each year brings a slew of Murray recordings in configurations ranging from duos to big bands – all this apart from his work in the World Saxophone Quartet and the host of guest appearances he regularly makes.

Such obsession has its cost. The impact of many of Murray's finest recent albums (Ballads and Spirituals, for example, both from 1990) quickly diminished in the avalanche of ensuing releases. Though Murray practically begs you to take him for granted, Shakill's Warrior is just too fine and unusual a project to be duly acknowledged and then filed away in his ever-bulging discography.

The album's pleasures are due as much to Don Pullen (on Hammond organ, rather than his customary piano) as to Murray. Theirs is a special partnership, in which mutual love for a musical genre – the classic tenor sax, organ and drums trio recordings of the late Fifties and early Sixties – elicits both deeply felt improvisations and a mature willingness to edit their more garrulous tendencies. That there is nothing in the least backward looking or nostalgic about Shakill's Warrior testifies to the inspired nature of the collaboration; the album is moody, openly expressive and romantic without ever lapsing into sentimentality.

Murray's charging lines, alongside the inventive Pullen and drummer Andrew Cyrille, animate each of the blues-based uptempo pieces. But the real jolts are the slow and midtempo tunes like "Milano Strut" and the particularly moving "In the Spirit," on which Murray ruminates in his dense tone and constructs sonorous melodies that weave intellect with passion. On Shakill's Warrior, Murray's greatness lies not in what he reveals of his considerable instrumental command – we already know about that – but in what he reveals of himself. (RS 627)

STEVE FUTTERMAN