Those with an ear for the independent sector in jazz will recognise The Pyramids as one of the legendary exponents of Egypt-inspired music that took an obvious cue from Sun Ra. The band issued several much sought-after albums in the 1970s (above all the outstanding King Of Kings) and their somewhat unforeseen reemergence under the official leadership of founder and alto saxophonist Idris Ackamoor is an exciting coup de theatre, all the more so because, to cut to the chase, the band still has it. The sense of ancestral ceremony in the music, from the highly atmospheric fanfares to the rhapsodic chants and rousing lyrics, that was the central building block some four decades ago, is well intact. But there has been a subtle updating of the sound. A more explicit resonance of African music, from highlife percussion to horn lines á la Ethiopiques, can be heard on some tracks while more abstract modalism, making no secret of a debt to Coltrane as well as Ra, defines others. While this work is not breaking radical new ground in terms of jazz of a decidedly Afrocentric character, it is very well executed, mostly bearing the hallmarks rather than the clichés of the genre.