After tackling Ludwig Van on 2020's Beethoven's Breakdown, Munich's ever-enterprising Jazzrausch Bigband now have a go at inventing a completely new genre – something we might call ‘jazz techno'. Whether or not this ever needed inventing in the first place is of course a matter of taste; but despite approaching this project with a good deal of trepidation, I ended up rather enjoying it. téchne is odd enough a crossover to actually work better in the ears than it does on paper.

There's a serious purpose to all this – bandleader Leonhard Kuhn says he wanted to explore the relationship between art and technology, but also bigger questions in science and philosophy. So ‘What It Is' looks at how Covid has deepened wealth inequality, and ‘AI 101' considers artificial intelligence (AI) as a compositional tool. It doesn't always work – occasionally the vocal interventions (especially Nesrine's) are rather grating – and ‘Der Literat''s attempt to marry Dada poet Hugo Ball with techno-jazz doesn't really come off, but the album is tremendous fun, sonically interesting and it swings ferociously. What we really need now is for this lockdown to end so that we can see Jazzrausch Bigband perform this stuff live in concert. I have a feeling it'll be a blast.