Colour (3CDs) ECM ****

Time has been good to these late-1970s albums, Yellow Fields, Silent Feetand Little Movements, by bassist Eberhard Weber's Colours quartet.

As composer, Weber drew on Steve Reich's minimalism, using ostinato devices in contrasting voices (and in counterpoint) in the band's material, yet the variety of mood and colour achieved with Rainer Brüninghaus, on keyboards, synthesizer and piano, and Charlie Mariano, on soprano, flutes, and the pungent nagaswaram and ethereal shenai from India, was absorbing. The balance between the composed/arranged and the spontaneous was often near-perfect, especially on the magisterial Yellow Fields, with Christensen a master colourist, timekeeper and commentator on drums. Thanks to drummer John Marshall, the later sessions had more fire, but this was a unique, remarkable and essentially European take on music.