Having never seen the Esbjorn Svensson Trio (EST) before, I was uncertain what to expect beyond a basic modern jazz, piano-based combo.

The support act, the equally unknown Eivind Aarset Trio, did little to prepare me for what was to come.

Eivind Aarset is a fine guitarist but his drummer's amplification was plagued by electronic switching pops and both drummer and bass player kept turning their backs to fiddle with their computers.

They performed a trance-like ambient jazz which sounded mechanical and uninspired and, notwithstanding the electronics, there was nothing here I hadn't heard 30 years before.

An intriguing contrast came when EST took the stage. Their instruments were acoustic but carefully amplified and enhanced electronically.

Pausing only to check the tuning of the double bass, the trio began with an exuberant reading of Thelonious Monk's I Mean You.

Subsequent numbers were selfpenned and, with titles such as Eighty-eight Days In My Veins, Viaticum, Mingle In The Mincing Machine, The Unstable Table And The Infamous Fable and When God Created The Coffeebreak, it was obvious a bizarre imagination was at work.

Esbjorn Svensson is a superb pianist but, despite his extraordinary crouch over the keyboard during more complex passages, his performance felt cold, as if his obvious debt to both Thelonious Monk and Oscar Peterson masked his individuality.

In contrast, the performances of bassist Dan Berglund and drummer Magnus Ostrom were tours de force. The mellow slap and thrum of the double bass became transmogrified as Berglund treated the sound with wah-wah and fuzz box.

Equally, while Ostrom kept impeccable time, his drums were strangely sound-treated so that, with the addition of sand-sticks and him leaning over to shout into the snare microphone, his percussion solo was a high spot.

Paul Brazier