The 30-something Luxembourgish drummer Jeff Herr has studied in-depth everything from classical and latin percussion to fusion jazz drumming. On Layer Cake he aims for a synthesis of improvisation and tightly-knit funky contemporary grooves alongside the French bassist Laurent Payfert and saxophonist Maxime Bender, one of the more well-known of Luxembourg's jazz musicians. Considering Herr's Corporation is essentially without an instrument that can play more than one note at the same time (this is a stripped down version of the band's original 2003 line up) the music is still strongly rooted harmonically. Herr's themes often have an eastern-ish as well as bluesy flavour to them and Bender on sax always makes his funk-fuelled yet lush-toned presence felt. The only nonoriginal is an interpretation of a lesser-known early single of David Bowie's titled ‘The Man Who Sold The World’, an artist who seems to be becoming the new Radiohead in terms of providing rock songs as vehicles for young jazz musicians – with Robert Glasper, Dylan Howe and Ben Cottrell's Mancunian big band Beats & Pieces coming up with some inspired twists on the singer's originals recently. Here less so: Bender adds the already intrinsic eastern inflexions to the melody, and it stays pretty faithful to Bowie's original version without really adding anything new to the mix. That gripe aside, this is a creative, sharply grooving trio that's certain to get feet moving and heads wagging at Newcastle's Jazz Café and London's Vortex when they tour later this month.