A posthumous gift in music

'Leucocyte' shows Esbjorn Svensson's trio at its most exploratory

Esbjorn Svensson (center, with bandmates Dan Berglund, left, and Magnus Ostrom) died in a scuba diving accident in June. (Jonas berggren)

Jazz lost a pioneer when pianist Esbjorn Svensson died June 14 at age 44 in a scuba diving accident off the coast of Stockholm. But he has left us with a posthumous gift: "Leucocyte," the final studio recording from his groundbreaking trio.

The Swedish pianist formed the Esbjorn Svensson Trio - E.S.T. for short - in 1999 with bassist Dan Berglund and drummer Magnus Ostrom, and they quickly established themselves as innovators, bringing a pop sensibility, rock and funk rhythms, and a classically informed style to their acoustic jazz. Their US breakthrough came in 2001 with "Somewhere Else Before," an album that broke the rules as they apply to jazz piano trios. Their songs and their live performances - including one memorable one in Copley Square in 2002 - drew more from classical music and techno than from great masters like Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans.

Svensson never became a big star, but he had a legion of devoted fans, particularly younger musicians and aficionados who would pack the clubs whenever he came to town. E.S.T. followed its American debut with roughly an album a year, each more adventurous. "Leucocyte," recorded last year, illustrates that Svensson was pushing himself to new heights.

The album, which arrives Tuesday, is the trio at its most exploratory. Structures and melodies barely exist. Electronics are heavily deployed. Distortion filters everything. Some tunes are made up almost entirely of unmelodic noises and rhythmic crackles. The crystalline notes of a piano are smudged by computer processing and feedback. It is often hard to detect whether Svensson is playing an electric piano or a grand piano whose sounds have been manipulated.

Svensson opens the album with a 77-second, unaccompanied elegy called "Decade," which we can assume was named after Svensson's death, as a reflection on his time in the spotlight. What follows is the trio's most exhilarating tune, a 17-minute monster called "Premonition Earth" that slinks along, a darkly lit scene in a thriller. Svensson begins his part simply enough, playing circular figures, but he gradually wanders farther from the melody. His is improvisation without borders. Berglund lays down a funk bass line, and the trio builds to a blood-pumping climax, Ostrom's battering-ram drumming leading the charge. This is acoustic jazz that rocks rather than swings.

The electronics create unsettling sonic landscapes. "Still" is 10 minutes of ambient electronica, and the four-part "Leucocyte" suite (one part of which is 60 seconds of silence) contains as much distortion and nonmusical sounds as actual notes. Or rather, the distortion is a kind of music. There are precedents for this philosophy - in the ideas of Sun Ra and electronic artists like Autechre - but rarely has it been presented so convincingly as E.S.T. does on "Leucocyte."

For all his talents, Svensson was not one to take himself too seriously. Evidence: the tune "Jazz," which begins with a wash of white noise that gives way to bop out of the Bud Powell school. Is the song title meant as a poke in the eye to the jazz establishment or critics? Or is it meant to convey that nothing else on "Leucocyte" should be considered jazz. Whatever the case, it is eminently enjoyable to hear Svensson's group play four minutes of straight-up bebop.

One thing we do know after listening to "Leucocyte" - the Esbjorn Svensson Trio's grandest achievement - is that its leader had much more to say, much more to explore. With his death, a trailblazer's path ends.

Steve Greenlee can be reached at greenlee@globe.com.