Ivo Neame is a core element in high-energy outfits, matching drummer Anton Eger’s wild Phronesis flurries and helping Marius Neset’s fiery early sound. His seventh album as leader is built on often staccato left hand, leaving tension in the jittery space between stabbed chords, and building percussive power while George Crowley’s sax finds smoother melodic routes.

‘The Rise of the Lizard People’, developed from the version on Neame’s lockdown album Glimpses of Truth (2021), sweeps his quartet into swirling vortexes, local whirlwinds also conjured by sax shimmers at the start of the clamorous, climbing ‘Pala’. Neame’s glassy solo here suggests 1940s LA penthouse cocktails, the closest he comes to blues.

This is still the sort of European post-bop he and his peers helped to pioneer, indebted to American forbears and classical composition, but with crowd-aware verve acting as a bridge towards the UK’s current danceable, rhythm-heavy boom.

The closer you listen, the more febrile detail emerges from his band’s interaction, the barely perceptible gap between each musician’s interlocking intent another high-wire, sparking space, drummer James Maddren the understated engine like a sotto voce Art Blakey, as Neame makes the rhythmic running.

Tom Farmer’s walking bass at the start of ‘Étre sur le Train de Gravy’ is an out of character, hands in pockets stroll, on a track with space for sinuous and screaming sax. Closer ‘The Trouble with Faith’ is quite different, an introspective, yearning ballad with the sax burred with breath over hushed brushes, and Farmer’s almost finger-picked, guitar-like bass solo finding vistas of desire. Neame still teeters between clipped and more limpid, rolling notes, naturally finding passion in power as much as prettiness, and keeping his music on edge.