There’s a rare acoustic alchemy at play in Time Is A Blind Guide. Personnel changes have guided and co-shaped the musical character of Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen’s ensemble and on the group’s third recording we experience a slight shift in the line-up, with Leo Svensson Sander taking over on cello. The new voice blends seamlessly into the quietly breathing ensemble sound, with a sparse but most precise Ayumi Tanaka navigating her way empathetically across the keyboard, responsive to Strønen’s percussive layers, Ole Morten Vågan’s bending double bass work and Håkon Aase’s lyrical violin accounts. At times the group’s three string instruments make up a firm trio-unit that enters into thoughtful dialogue with piano and percussion, but for the most part, the group’s pulse works as a whole, with each instrument dynamically gliding in and out of the picture, captured in well-known acoustics of Rainbow Studio. The album, recorded at Rainbow Studio, Oslo in 2021, and mixed in Munich in 2024, was produced by Manfred Eicher. Release date is Dec. 5th, 2025. By the end, one realizes that Off Stillness is as much a pilgrimage as an artistic statement. Its stories do not unfold in straight lines but in spirals, circling back to that teenage boy in Tønsberg who planted a seed that has now grown into a tree in its own right. The music invites repeated listening not to decipher it but to inhabit it, each return revealing new details, like light shifting across the same landscape at different hours. For all these reasons, it may well be—both in craft and in spirit—the ECM album of the year. There is truly nothing else like it. Tyran Grillo – Between sound & space The group’s previous recording Lucus (2018) garnered rave-reviews, with the German daily Nürnberger Nachrichten pinpointing exactly the strengths that make TIABG so unique, calling the ensemble “a musically, even philosophically open-minded quintet exploring outer space somewhere between baroque and folk. Questioning, hesitating, emphasising. This is jazz full of searching, longing, devoted to brittle beauty.” The same qualities are to the fore once more. Don Lucoff, DL Media Music “Off Stillness” is another triumph: searching, delicately sculpted, and quietly radical. A standout in Strønen’s already distinguished ECM catalogue. Mike Gates, UK Vibe