Desert Marauders represents the final iteration of pianist Art Lande’s Rubisa Patrol quartet, which over its flash-in-the-pan tenure produced a solid, if modest, body of imaginative work. For this recording Kurt Wortman replaces Glenn Cronkhite on drums and provides plenty of adhesive for otherwise free-floating themes and ideas. His stop-and-start playing engages Lande in exciting conversation throughout the groovy opener. At 16 minutes, it is more main course than appetizer, but whets our expectations all the same with its vivid prime directive while offering food for thought via Mark Isham’s serpentine melodies. Bassist Bill Douglass works us back into the swing of things with consummate fortitude.

Saxophonist, flutist, and composer Lennart Åberg is among ECM’s sleeper talents. Having graced the label only as sideman to 1994’s Dona Nostra, his brilliance was saved instead for the limited JAPO imprint. On this record he is joined by fellow Swedes Bobo Stenson (piano) and Palle Danielsson (bass), both familiar to ECM listeners. Perhaps not is American drummer Leroy Lowe, who rounds out this incarnation of the quartet known as Rena Rama and played with the group from 1975 to 1983.

Directions was a short-lived unit from the evolving mind of drummer Jack DeJohnette, who on this ECM joint proved once again that his deftness at the keyboard is almost on par with his mainstay. New Rags features the same line-up (John Abercrombie on electric guitar and mandolin, Alex Foster on reeds, and Mike Richmond on basses) as 1976’s Untitled, sans Bernhardt. Our frontman meanders into the thick of things with three originals, of which the title track bristles with luscious work from Richmond in a steady interplay with all.