The ripped-paper press roll and whiz round the kit that opens this album is the only clue that a drummer is in charge. Thereafter, the excellent Russian percussionist Sasha Mashin conducts the album's two radically different ensembles from within. The first four tracks blend Hiske Oosterwijk's vocals with panoramic brass, feature trumpeter Alexander Sipiagin and a range of fusion beats. Here, Mashin marks the arranged twists, turns and dynamic shifts of each piece with precise rolls, cymbal splashes and rim-shot cracks. Oosterwijk's lyrics and lines have a somewhat Brechtian air – “Remember freedom is inside an honest life”, she sings on second track, ‘Jazzmashin’. And when her voice joins in with the brass's zig-zag lines and dense harmonies, the arrangements are a distant cousin to a Mike Westbrook score. The opener, ‘Sipiagin's Mood’, begins as a midtempo mediation but changes tack as each solo unfolds and ‘7=5’ and ‘Paint’ both sit on structured fusion beats. Alto saxophonist Rosario Giuliani slow-burns impressively on the former, but it is the internationally known Sipiagin who stands out. The final tracks are dominated by the vocal inflections and go-for-it fire of Zhenya Strigalev's alto sax. The calypso ‘Some Thomas’, a quirky play on Sonny Rollins ‘St Thomas’, features thoughtful Josh Evans trumpet. Elsewhere, Strigalev is alone in the frontline. The surreal mash up ‘Strange Party’ is followed by the fast 4/4 of ‘Sharp Night’ and the single-key funk of ‘Ku Ku’. The album ends with the fractured free jazz of bassist Daria Chernakova's ‘Omulu Dance’. Mashin, impressively disciplined throughout, is equally assured on fusion, straightahead and free, and spits beats with a focused venom once the soloists let rip.