There was a time, maybe 20 years ago, when it seemed like every other UK jazz artist of note was coming out of Leeds. Here’s a new duo with bags of imagination to rekindle that tradition. Saxophonist Harvey Parkin-Christie and Icelandic drummer Hinrik Þórisson are products of the city’s famed Conservatoire – but their debut reveals a wealth of extracurricular moods and influences.

Most of the pieces are explorations of existing compositions filtered through wide-open interpretations. Opening track, ‘Undir Stórasteini’ (by Icelandic composer Jón Múli), floats around a Colin Stetson-ish tenor warble with gentle explorations of the toms. ‘Obbobboi’ is more raucous with a big, gutbucket tenor tone and some snappy drum clatter. On ‘Skarfurinn,’ Parkin-Christie breaks out the tenor and soprano simultaneously for some double sax blasts à la Roland Kirk, eliciting voluminously tumbling tom rolls.

‘Fróði’ is the only freely improvised track, with the tenor launching into stratospheric altissimo squalls and the duo making a good fist of the kind of explosive interplay you might have expected from Peter Brötzmann and Steve Noble. Wrapping up with the elegiac ‘Klósigar’ leaning towards a Scandinavian folk feel, it’s an album with much to enjoy from a young duo of promise.