Ben Somers stands apart on the scene: as well as being an excellent tenor sax player, he's also a very accomplished bassist; as well as a jazz player, he's also steeped in country and folk music, thanks to the influence of his pro muso dad, and has spent as much time immersed in bluegrass as in bebop. He's an inventive and exciting musician across all these traditions: for this record, he plants his flag in the sand with an idiosyncratic statement that unites his various influences in a set of original compositions recorded live in the studio with a killer band.

The most obvious comparison would be Metheny's 80/81 with its blend of free-bop and Americana, though Somers has his own distinctive voice on tenor – a robust, tough tone, coloured with vocal inflections and capable of swinging hard over the dream rhythm team of Mirko Scarcia and Tim Giles. Rob Updegraf is a suitable foil on guitar, embellishing his fluid contemporary-jazz single-note runs with bends and slurs that point the listener towards an earthier soul-R&B language. ‘Take Your Banner’ has a New Orleans swagger, ‘Steel Rail Counterpoint’ has a pastoral country flavour that expands into freer territory and allows space for Scarcia to demonstrate his astonishing chops, while ‘Gortado’ has a Celtic-flavoured coda – but Somers integrates it all convincingly together and the band really play the hell out of everything, from the complex boppish unisons of ‘Good Boy’ to the creative textural explorations of ‘Into The Void’. Refreshingly different, and delivered with total conviction.