Until fairly recently the Staffordshire-born Dan Nicholls was one of the least visible members of North London’s LOOP Collective. But he’s certainly someone who symbolises what the movement is all about. He has studied in Birmingham, the prestigious Copenhagen Rhythmic Music Conservatory as well as Indian classical music. This year he explores contemporary West African music on a Jazzlines funded-fellowship. But he’s far from the academic this implies, seeing jazz as expressive of social and political issues. He demonstrates this on his full-length debut Ruins. The subtext is media exploitation of disasters and war and is driven by the use of samples, tapes and field recordings. Commenting on topical issues such as the Arab Spring (‘Withdrawal’) and press intrusion (‘Voice Intercepts’), the group consists of musicians from the sharp end of the UK jazz scene. It’s a trippy, apocalyptic soundscape, lying somewhere between Troyka and Tom Challenger’s Ma, where New York avant-downtown/jam band fusion meets math-rock and electronica, that emphasises whirling loops. Nicholls the musician likes spacey textures that come from a range of keyboards, his Hammond organ more Soft Machine than Medeski Martin & Wood.