If James Beckwith's name isn't at the forefront of current press coverage of ‘the new jazz thing’, a glance at the performer credits on this, his second solo release, shows how thoroughly embedded in the young London scene he is. However, Beckwith ploughs his own furrow: the album title namechecks his London postcode, but the sound owes more to the dense, glossy sonics of LA and New York in the high point of late 1970s studio fusion. ‘Descent’ adds woodwind textures to create a rich ambience, with Chelsea Carmichael's bass clarinet pointing clearly towards the genre's precedents, and ‘Muon (Part 1)’ combines slick funk backbeats with punchy horns and burbling analogue synths for some seductively retro excitement.

This isn’t just an exercise in nostalgic recreation: Beckwith's longtime bass and drums team of Joe Downard and Harry Pope are thoroughly conversant in the current fusion language, as evidenced by the knotty displacements of ‘Tekkers’, and Beckwith tempers the bravura workouts with a more contemporary sounding widescreen introspection on ‘Dreamliner’ and 'Meditations’. Both the title track and the standout ‘Floating’ foreground acoustic bass and piano on the sonic palette to excellent effect, with the latter's solo from trumpet star James Copus an album highlight.

Sophisticated and characterful, but also highly accessible, this album commands the attention.