Guitarist-composer David Torn, a longstanding ECM artist, has enjoyed a particularly fruitful 21st-century with the label, releasing two albums under his own name - the solo only sky and quartet disc prezens in addition to producing records by Tim Berne and Michael Formanek.

After the spare and lengthy reflections and dislocated experiments of his excellent Dance album, Gary Numan made a return to a more focused approach with I, Assassin, which turned out to be his last truly great album for many years. Much of what would characterize his later music in the '80s did start to show up here, to be sure, but instead of the formless flailing all too apparent on Warriors, and especially on Berserker, Numan's work here with modern electronic funk combines his early rigor and to-the-point rhythms with a deft, creative hand in the arrangements.

The Secret Between the Shadow and the Soul finds the celebrated Branford Marsalis Quartet at a new peak, addressing a kaleidoscope of moods with inspiration and group commitment. As usual there is compositional input from the veteran members, with Eric Revis supplying the surging “Dance of the Evil Toys” and more tensile yet equally dynamic “Nilaste,” while Calderazzo reinforces the lyrical compositional yin to his virtuosic keyboard yang in “Cianna” and “Conversation Among the Ruins.”