It was Larry Coryell, the 1970s fusion star and enduring guitar-jazz favourite – on an Irish studio session that turned out to be his last before his sudden death in 2016 – who convinced his Irish friend Kevin Brady to consider electric music as a 'Plan B' to the popular Dublin drummer's acoustic-postbop life. The advice produced this sharp session with elegant Michigan pianist Bill Carrothers on Fender Rhodes and regular Brady sidekick Dave Redmond on bass guitar, with Mingus Big Band saxophonist Seamus Blake uncorking a string of typically lissome and ingenious tenor solos out front.

Though Brady acknowledges the influence of Miles' early electric bands and Herbie Hancock's Headhunters here, Plan B is no straight 1970s-fusion homage. The drummer's themes are often coaxingly brooding invitations to his partners' collective eloquence rather than electric-ambient moonwalks or big-hitting groovers – 'Airbourne', 'Plan B' and 'Short n Sweet' all begin with long tenor tones under which subtle rhythmic undercurrents build, and the leader's admiration for Jack DeJohnette's creative mix of complexity and directness is unmistakeable. 'Spindle Top' stretches an oblique, evasively-resolving theme over fiercely emphatic percussion, while the film-noirish 'Out of the Blue' slowly nudges both Blake and Carrothers from pensive rangefinding into headlong double-time, and the closing 'Suicide Squeeze' is a muscular postbop twister over Redmond's vivaciously springy bassline.

Seamus Blake is the star of this expertly accomplished show, even if plugging in hasn't quite unleashed all the fresh energies Kevin Brady might have been after.