By contemporary CD standards this is relatively brief at just over 42 minutes, but packs the kind of punch that many artists fail to make over much longer running times. This is partly down to the tightly channeled power and concentration of the playing, whereby Robinson, Thomas and Williamson only make florid statements when absolutely necessary. Indeed, # One stands up as much as an adventure in focussed rhythm as it does harmony and texture, and the magic lies in the way the performed and computer-generated patterns appear to simultaneously blend and clash. Nowhere is this more apparent than ‘Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?’, one of the most fantastically imaginative, beguiling patchworks of lament and dance heard of late. Its alternations of meditative and explosive passages suggest a desire to play on light and shade in the most theatrical way, and on repeat listening one hears how the character of the piece is astutely built on an undercurrent of Afro-samba that is both tender and turbulent. Invoking the spirit of everybody from Bobby Naughton and Walt Dickerson to Dave Burrell and Steve Lacy, Black Top takes groove playing to a higher level on ‘Archaic Nubian Stepdub’, where the whimsy of the title – an actual quote from somebody keen to learn more about the soundtrack to today's yootman – materialises in a pithy game of pinball syncopation between the players and a series of programmed beats that those of a certain age may well call Pac-Man funk, if not funk Man-Pac. While jazz industry convention would most probably deem Black Top an avant-garde ensemble the reality is much more complex. This ever-changing band is a rejection of simplified version of Afro-Diasporan history, and an affirmation of the producer-beatmaker-techno warrior as a wholly natural ally, rather than presumed enemy, of the composer-improviser.