Though he's forever associated with New York's post-punk No Wave scene, James Chance really just wanted to be a jazzer. Growing up James Siegfried in Milwaukee, he'd played piano before gravitating to alto sax and immersing himself in the tradition, listening to everyone from Bird to Ayler. But, it was when he moved to New York, aged 23, in 1976, that a crucial breakthrough was made: initially hoping to move in on the loft scene, he was disappointed to discover that nobody danced to jazz any more. Where was all the action? Keen to inject some sex and danger into New York's downtown milieu, the kid from Wisconsin transformed himself into James Chance, proposing a hyperactive and confrontational mix of funk, punk and free jazz that demanded movement. His debut album, Buy, released in 1979, presented Chance as some kind of stroppy amphetamine-priest, declaiming in a petulant yelp of a voice and firing off unhinged blats of alto sax over tight, angular grooves driven on by razor-wire, post-Sharrock slide guitar. Released at almost exactly the same time, Off White foregrounded and undermined any accusations of cultural appropriation by confronting the racial issue head-on, adding a disco bounce and seeing Chance transformed into James White, with a knowing nod to the Godfather of funk, James Brown. Maybe Chance/White never quite achieved the jazz gravitas he first set out for, but his alto playing remains a raw treat, achieving – in almost exactly the same way as Ted Milton of UK post-punk outfit Blurt did at the same time – a harsh, braying approximation of Ornette Coleman by way of Captain Beefheart's lateral vision. And you can dance to it, too.