STAN TRACEY With Love from Jazz Trio *****

Long unavailable, this late-1960s classic was made two years after Tracey's Under Milk Wood suite, reuniting him with Bobby Wellins (tenor) and Jackie Dougan (drums) from that seminal album, with Dave Green in on bass. Tracey, who augments his piano with vibes and celeste, again wrote all the music. The titles, among them Two Part Intention, Undercover Lover, Amoroso Only Moreso, Everywhere Derriere and Love Now Weep Later, suggest a typically wry take on the subjects of love and sex. This is emphatically borne out in the playing, most notably in the leader's idiosyncratic, Monkish piano, whose dissonant astringencies disturb neither the continuity nor unity of his solos, or the group's performance.

Wellins, yet again, is superb; whether outlining melody with unsentimental tenderness or soloing with magisterial authority, he shares a rare empathy with Tracey and an uncanny ability to get inside the pianist's music. The quartet's approach has evolved, too. As Andy Cleyndert's sleeve notes point out, Dougan and Green and their deputies (Ronnie Stephenson and Lennie Bush), take a more upfront role in each performance.

There's more dialogue than on Under Milk Wood and even greater dynamism in the results, which sound as freshly minted today as they were almost four decades ago. And happily, Tracey, Wellins and Green are still with us, and still formidable. www.triorecords.co.uk