Featuring a powerhouse New York City band, Slovenian progressive jazz guitarist Samo Salamon pursues disparate angles and levels of intensity here. Consequently, his blossoming discography intimates a potpourri of intentions and modes of attack.

Salamon is equally comfortable soaring into the stratosphere or comping for his fellow soloists, while intermittently incorporating a mainstream jazz aesthetic into his arsenal. On this outing, the quintet executes buoyant twist, turns and subtleties, abetted by alto saxophonist David Binney’s zinging phraseology, where primary themes are often reengineered.

With the piece titled "Her Name," Salamon and Binney render dreamy passages amid contrapuntal mini-motifs. And in other regions of sound, the guitarist’s tension building exercises and meticulously crafted phrasings nudge the quintet into highly-charged rhythmic vamps. Essentially, Salamon provides ammunition for the unit’s impacting groove-based forays, spiced with catchy hooks and hyper-mode maneuvers.

On "Up and Down," the musicians generate ascending choruses while throttling back to parallel the up and down-like insinuations that are counterbalanced by the artists’ injection of an upbeat calypso vibe. No doubt, Salamon’s spiraling reputation within global jazz circles is reaffirmed by this zesty outing that packs a wallop. It’s all nicely countered by a sequence of intricately designed choruses to coincide with the soloists’ penetrating exchanges.