Is there such a thing as a spoof piano trio? Well I guess there is but in irony-loving jazz circles [em], even in Dalston, would not qualify. The only thing ‘pretend’ about the trio on this showing was the German jazz piano trio’s fluently elegant take on Komeda’s music for Roman Polanski’s 1967 knockabout curiosity The Fearless Vampire Killers, the first song of the second set. What would bat connoisseur Professor Abronsius, in the film played by the great Beckettian actor Jack MacGowran, have made of it? Who knows, but aficionados of these small nocturnal mammals have a thing or two in common with jazz fans, 50 or so of whom were gathered last night (thankfully the right way up) in the Vortex for the return to the club of pianist Michael Wollny, bassist Eva Kruse, and drummer Eric Schaefer. Opening with two numbers from their 2006 album II, Schaefer’s ‘So Will Die Sonn’ Nun Untergehen’ and ‘Phelgma Phighter’, the band soon hit their stride with the long haired youthful-looking Wollny fleet of foot and luxuriously supple in his darting runs, while Kruse, who is expecting a baby, was smilingly attentive and supremely intuitive in her confidently startling harmonic counterblasts. ‘Dario’ from last year’s superb Wasted & Wanted, with Schaefer picking up a melodica at the beginning of the number, altered the focus of the set as it gained content and depth and Schaefer’s little touches on bells and scuffling industrial sounds as well as his ability to rock out added much to the beautiful, often sensuous, voicings that Wollny habitually creates. Their remarkable version of Schubert’s ‘Ihr Bild’ was even better than on the excellent album version. Wollny mused at the end that Kraftwerk were in town at Tate Modern before [em] launched into their intuitively recomposed version of ‘Das Modell’. A world away from the ritual of electronic music, [em] are streets ahead of anyone’s idea of a jazz trio and have just got to be heard. Stephen Graham