After the success of its debut recording (Jazz Magazine gave “Fremdenzimmer” a Choc award, for instance) and extensive touring (‘CONCERT OF THE YEAR 2012’ in Jazzman by D. Cristol), Baloni is back for more slow boiling, chamber jazz-like, surrealistic soundscapes. Puzzled? Well, there’s much: this is a New York-born trio, but the musicians gathered are from Europe. Joachim Badenhorst (check him with Han Bennink’s Trio, Tony Malaby’s Novela and Thomas Heberer’s Carino), Frantz Loriot (partnerships with Joelle Léandre, Barre Phillips and David S. Ware, among others) and Pascal Niggenkemper (you heard him with Gerald Cleaver, Frank Gratkowski, Tyshawn Sorey and Simon Nabatov) play a music with obvious European roots (yes, the classical and contemporary influences are self-evident), but they do it the Big Apple way. This means there’s in “Belleke” an elegancy in the scores reminiscent of, let’s say, someone like Erik Satie and the Impressionist composers, but the drive, the improvisational focus, the unquietness are distinctive of the American creative jazz. Imagine the minutes before a storm: what you hear is that dark, and that menacing.