James Brandon Lewis and Jaimie Branch appeared within a few nights of each other, and a stone's throw – the former at the Vortex and the latter at Cafe OTO – at last year's London Jazz Festival. Those of us lucky enough to attend both gigs relished the prospect of their meeting, which Lewis actually announced, and this studio session does not disappoint. All the high-voltage energy of both gigs has been coherently channelled into a performance that balances aggression and introspection. JBL's group has a superb rhythmic and harmonic agility that enables it to move from hard, funky backbeats, sometimes with an electric Miles undercurrent, to interesting hybrids of thrash and free improvisation where the grind and grit of guitarist Anthony Pirog's chords are a perfect foil for the stark motifs of the horns Branch's whirlwind lines, with their searing tone, gel potently with Lewis' sturdy hollers. Most impressively, there is a strain of melancholy running through this album that is deeply emotive, and some of the slower tempos are a platform for Lewis to vividly frame strong political convictions An unruly, yet righteous manifesto.