Since leaving the ambit of Talk Talk in 1992, Tim Friese-Greene has recorded two albums as Heligoland, but 10 Sketches for Piano Trio is the first to be released under his own name. Recorded in an old malthouse with a piano Tim picked up in a local market, and mixed by Grammy award winner Phill Brown (Eno, Bob Marley, John Martyn) in the valve-heaven of London's Westpoint Studios, 10 Sketches. revels in its contradictions, and defies judgement in relation to anything except absolutes. Because the classic featured line-up of drums, acoustic bass and piano is largely familiar to the ear, we might assume the instruments will take up roles normally associated with jazz. But here the playing and attitude subverts this expectation, and delivers something more primitive on a technical level, more rigorous on a formal level, and something more pared-down harmonically. Halfway, the listener begins to pick up on the disparate influences, from Tim's early experience engineering Sex Pistols sessions, to later experiments in ambient minimalism with Talk Talk, including the seminal albums Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock. With Tim playing all the instruments, there is no following of any pre-arranged script, although the very concise thematic material (sometimes just a smudge of a few notes) is tightly developed, in a way that recalls Janacek or Debussy. But elusive in form though it is, neither could it be described as free, as the 'musicians' are apparently knitted together by a kind of secret code, in a fragile symbiosis.