This band really has such a distinctive sound. Totally different from anything else on the scene today. It's a magic mix of seasoned iconic veterans in their sixties and seventies who never topped any popularity polls and younger, but hardened, fortysomethings. Put together by David Weiss, who is also responsible for six of the eight cleverlyvoiced arrangements, The Cookers show us that Billy Harper (especially), Eddie Henderson, George Cables and Cecil McBee are still formidable highly creative musicians – still writing uncommercial and challenging compositions, personal but never dated and blowing with the same spirituality and emotional gospel roots that have permeated their playing for some four decades. Harper's two originals – including the superb opener ‘Believe For It is True’ – have a ferocity about them, echoed in his passionate solos, that contrast perfectly with the relatively peaceful beauty of those by Cables and McBee. This is their third album and, though it's still rough and ready in places (particularly on the only cover, Wayne Shorter's ‘Free For All’), arguably their most cohesive. The scores in a way reflect their on-stage set-up – the two trumpets in the centre, flanked by the saxes (Handy is excellent, too). The Cookers have their own special grooves, the most appealing – and exciting – of which is the mediumdown, slightly hesitant, stop-and-start deep and dark one, typified by Billy Harper's title tune.