Kit Downes, Petter Eldh, James Maddren

CD version. Vermillion is the third ECM album led by British pianist Kit Downes, and his first for the label at the head of a piano trio. After the church organ of Obsidian (2018) and the quintet of Dreamlife of Debris (2019), he sits at the piano with bassist Petter Eldh and drummer James Maddren. The three had already recorded and toured as Enemy, but here they appear under their own names, with a quieter and more transparent sound.

The album was recorded in May and June 2021 at the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in Lugano, with Stefano Amerio as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer. Downes and Eldh each contributed five compositions, and the programme ends with the only cover. "We pushed ourselves into an area that we haven't played in before, which is a more chamber music-oriented sound," Downes told The Arts Desk. He also credits his late mentor, the pianist John Taylor, to whom he had dedicated his first ECM recording.

Most of the eleven pieces are short, between two and a half and five minutes, and several sketch a melody and then let it dissolve. Downes's Seceda grows from a slow piano introduction into a deep groove around a warm chordal passage. His Rolling Thunder works as a sparse interlude, framed by Maddren's china cymbal and Eldh's quiet counterpoint. Eldh's Class Fails, the longest track, opens with a gentle drum solo before piano and bass enter. The trio closes with Jimi Hendrix's Castles Made of Sand, taken apart and rebuilt around a few essential lines of the original.

Critics heard the Bill Evans lineage of the interactive trio, but also the funk and hip-hop background that Eldh brings to tunes such as Plus Puls and Waders. In The Guardian, John Fordham described "a terrific acoustic trio of cool fluency and conversational ease". For Thom Jurek at AllMusic, "there are no pyrotechnics, only intimate communication" built on harmonic invention and the use of space. BBC Music Magazine gave the album five stars, and German monthlies Audio and Stereoplay both named it jazz CD of the month.

CD edition, ECM 2721, released on 11 February 2022, in a jewel case with a 12-page booklet.