Dead Cat Bounce, led by New York-based composer and reedsman Matt Steckler, has a cheeky, massed horn approach similar to another Big Apple outfit, Microscopic Septet. That means tunes with plenty of gutsy, extended soloing, bookended by complex, multifaceted heads that veer between nostalgic, old-timey blues-swing and slightly pedestrian funk-lite. Steckler has clearly put a lot of thought into his horn arrangements but there's an unfortunately corny whiff of the light entertainment big band about much of it. It's said that West Coast saxophonist Tom Scott, who composed a great deal of iconic TV music in the 1970s, had been profoundly influenced by Zappa's semi-orchestral approach to jazz-rock and you can definitely hear a lot of that small-screen-Mothers aesthetic here: flutes and woodwinds sketching classically-nuanced interludes; tense Dirty Harry car-chase themes; and – less convincingly – chirpy Cagney And Lacey-style plastic sax solos that lack real passion. Sounds for swinging smart alecks.