Brass is obviously the – or at least an – ‘in’ thing at the moment; certainly groups with the word ‘Brass’ in their name are, at any rate. In addition to Brass Jaw, now onto their fourth album, we have Tom Challenger's new project, Brass Mask, which throws down the gauntlet to the Scottish quartet by pulling together not just four horns but seven. And a percussionist. Their chief influence is apparently the flamboyant street bands of the New Orleans Carnival, and you can certainly hear the rich sound of the American Deep South in much of the music here. If somewhat retro in inspiration, the results are far from dustily antiquarian – there are too many really good contemporary blowers on board for that to be the case. There's also a nod to Henry Threadgill – the sophisticated idiom of the ensemble work bestrides the decades. Challenger provides a lot of the tunes, although there are some nicely reworked traditional numbers – ‘I Thank You Jesus’ sounds like the accompaniment to a spiritually passionate striptease in a church hall segued with a particularly exuberant funeral march. There's humour in the infectious saxophone leaps and Theon Cross's parping tuba bass line on opener ‘Onnellinen’. Like many of the tracks here, once heard it's hard to get out of your head.