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Like Get the Blessing, and other jazz-influenced groove bands reluctant to risk audience patience by travelling too far from a hook, the Neil Cowley Trio continues to keep improvisation on a pretty tight leash. But the one-time Brand New Heavy has made a more complex and subtle album with Radio Silence. It begins with an almost free-improv speculativeness that turns into an expansive, Bad Plus-like anthem on the opening Monoface, and creates a memorable title theme from swooping chords over soft percussion. A typical Cowley chord-banging groove does erupt in the middle of that, and the same device resurfaces throughout the album, probably more times than is necessary to keep the audience in the loop. But Cowley is refining his skills as a composer of striking motifs - in the distantly flamenco associations of Vice Skating, in the joyously hard-rocking Gerald, and in the punchy slow-funk theme of Stereoface. Radio Silence does reveal more of Neil Cowley's range, though jazzers might still feel a bit shortchanged by how quickly he pulls the plug on improvisation.