Not one band but three, each one a sextet, and each recorded on a different night at London’s Vortex. The admirably calm, self-effacing Alex Hitchcock loves to set himself daunting challenges, and this is probably his biggest yet. Of course, if you’re going to embark on something as ambitious as this, it helps to book top-drawer musicians who know your work and love playing it. The trust Hitchcock has for them gave him the confidence to let go of the reins and see what they came up with on the night.

It’s impossible to do justice in a short review to a long album as varied and richly satisfying as this. Suffice to say that the composer is an unabashed modernist. He has developed the knack of writing tunes whose shape is hard to discern at first, but which gradually assume recognisable form as they approach the end.

Standout moments are many: ‘Red’, with its sweet piano intro from Kit Downes, before the theme emerges first from Lewis Wright’s vibes and then James Copus’s trumpet and Hitchcock’s tenor.; the serene Wayne Shorter-esque ‘Oblique’; ’Lift’, with its fiendishly complex time signature, delivered in relaxed form by Ant Law on guitar and heading out with the joyous pairing of Hitchcock and Alex Ridout; the Nordic-sounding ‘Verglas’, with gentle, wordless vocals from Liselotte Östblom and interplanetary guitar from Rob Luft. This is superior stuff that sounds great from the first time you hear it, and just keeps getting better.