Paths, Prints pairs Jan Garbarek with the American guitarist Bill Frisell, alongside two long-standing partners, bassist Eberhard Weber and drummer Jon Christensen. Recorded in Oslo in December 1981 and released by ECM in September 1982, it is a quiet, closely knit quartet record. The eight pieces, all by Garbarek, range from a three-minute duet to the ten-minute Footprints. Frisell's broad, sweeping guitar gives the saxophone a new setting, and the partnership continued on the next Garbarek group album.

The session took place at Talent Studio, with Jan Erik Kongshaug engineering and Manfred Eicher producing. Garbarek plays tenor and soprano saxophones, wood flutes and percussion, Weber bass, and Christensen drums and percussion. Christensen had drummed on Garbarek's first ECM album, Afric Pepperbird, in 1970, and both he and Weber were in the Garbarek group of Photo With... in 1978. Frisell had already recorded for ECM on Weber's album Fluid Rustle in 1979. The cover photograph is by Petra Nettelbeck, the design by Barbara Wojirsch.

The pieces move slowly and leave room for each player, and quieter tracks such as The Path and Arc stay close to stillness. On Kite Dance Weber's round, gliding bass notes are set against Frisell's guitar. Footprints, the longest track, gives Christensen space for a colourful, shifting drum part. To B.E., marked in the booklet with a cross and the year 1980, is a short duet between Garbarek and Frisell.

In AllMusic Ron Wynn called it "one of the better, more exciting releases" and credited Frisell for it. On the ECM blog Between Sound and Space, Tyran Grillo heard the session as a dream team for Eicher. He wrote that "Garbarek's sharply defined reveries prove the perfect fulcrum for Frisell's broadly sweeping clock hands." Grillo found the saxophonist at his most effective in the intimate passages, the duet To B.E. and Considering the Snail. Wayfarer, recorded in March 1983, kept Frisell and Weber in the group with a new drummer, Michael DiPasqua.

This CD edition holds the eight pieces of ECM 1223, first released on LP in 1982, in the original running order from The Path to Still.