This long-awaited debut album sees the Brighton-to-London young guns finally follow up on their 2017 Yellow Ochre EP. The intervening years have seen them gainfully employed as sidemen for a variety of hip London types, and collectively honing their onstage act as support for a range of similarly forward thinking artists from Sons Of Kemet to Moses Boyd, so they’ve clearly been absorbing some fascinatingly diverse influences.

The radio-friendly groove of ‘The Wad’ sets the scene, with Stephenson-Oliver’s banks of synths laying down rich analogue textures over the rhythm sections’ fat 4/4 pulse, but 'MacEnroe' demonstrates they’re not afraid to throw some odd meters into the mix along with the hipster minimalism, retro keys and earworm synth hooks. Like the pioneer fusioneers of the 1970s they draw inspiration from contemporary pop and R&B sounds as much as from jazz and fusion, and the end result is like a very 21st century update of George Duke’s records for MPS - a mix of pop directness with the airy detachment of artists like Toro Y Moi and Jordan Rakei, spiced with an oblique proggy sensibility over killer grooves. The rhythm team of Dawson and Taylor can cook up a storm under Stephenson-Oliver’s crunchy Fender Rhodes, as evidenced by 'The Winter Games', but the band have an unerring ear for the coolly contemporary that ensures that nothing ever sounds contrived or overwrought, and the finely balanced blend of chops and hooks, retro and modern, combine to rate this album among the year’s freshest debuts in any genre.