Just when the extensive and long overdue reissue programme of the music of Horace Tapscott looks set to have finished, more recordings come to light. As is the case with previous releases, these latest new old albums are superlative.

The Los Angeles-based pianist-composer-activist kept faith in the big band aesthetic throughout the 1970s, a time when many orchestras were on the wane, and, more importantly, he developed a personal language for his 16-piece ensemble that combined his own vision as a composer and the skills of his bandmembers.

On both The Call and Flight 17, Tapscott stays true to his modus operandi of epic pieces: sometimes with slow moving modal patterns that build on the timeless Trane/Tyner foundation, sometimes with faster, hard-edged riffs that have a starkly dissonant quality that serves the rousingly aggressive if not confrontational ambiances created.

The heavy bottom end of the band – with a doubling up of drums and basses – as well as the chunky brass scores impart a statuesque character to Tapscott’s music, as if he were intent on embedding a whole landscape of sound into every performance. Drawing on anything from swing to avant-garde and African rhythms he loosely picks up from where Randy Weston left off with his landmark Uhuru Kwanza album to create a style of his own. Among his skilled accompanists, the likes of flautist Linda Hill, vocalist–flautist Adele Sebastian and saxophonist Jesse Sharps all stand out; but Tapscott’s work is very much about the whole as well as the many very substantial parts.

This is a glorious example of black culture as rousing community action, literally and figuratively.