For over a decade now, the E17 jazz collective has been the wellspring of creative music partnerships among young musicians as well as with contributing guests in ‘live’ monthly residencies, and Solstice, a songs-based sextet, brings together the cream of Walthamstow's jazz community. While the band name, musical influences and the animation artwork on the sleeve of their debut CD Alimentation seem to evoke something of the psychedelic hippy folk-prog fraternity of 1970's Canterbury bands, Solstice have less cosmic, more sober contemporary pursuits with the tunes titled after and fuelled by their love of home cooking and each other's company. All originals, aside from the bassist Dave Manington's arrangement of Bjork's ‘The Anchor Song’, the individualistic young English improv-vocalist Brigitte Beraha and band draw from the restless energy of Brooklyn's alternative jazz scene, the airy English folk-jazz improv of Norma Winstone who's certainly on Beraha's list of mentors and, perhaps most of all, the darting Brazilian rhythms, intervallic leaps and melting harmonies associated with the likes of Hermeto Pascoal, Milton Nascimento and Flora Purim. If they are a more introverted English take on the latter, Solstice make divertingly creative music with a human touch that's become something of a rarity of late.