3=1

Belgium has a strong surrealist tradition – second only to France's, in fact – and there's a strand of its living DNA running through the music of Ekko Trio, featuring the accordion of Pablo Golder and the trumpet of Antoine Dawans gathered around the mandolin of Lorcan Fahy, between them conjuring up strangely ‘other’ but familiar musical worlds mixing acoustic folk with a Belgian and Irish bent with powerful jazz improvisations, snaking of labyrinthine-like from the main body of the music into places unknown. If you're expecting a CD or vinyl release, though, think again. Think flip book, depicting three stickmen climbing into a saucepan whose lid flies off to become a flying saucer. So far, so surreal – there's a code in the back you key in to unlock your tracks, from which the brief opening ‘Ekko's Jingle’ unfolds through tune assemblages such as ‘Triton’, ‘Préval’, ‘Nestor’ and ‘Dinosaurus Swing’.

To these ears, Ekko Trio are a North European Benelux parallel to Three Cane Whale's exquisite musical miniatures, with a touch of Leveret in Golder's diatonic accordion, and the same technical assurance and creative deftness and flow comes to the fore on this release, with plenty of humour to keep it airborne.