Theo Croker’s last album Star Nation earned him a Grammy nomination, and the steep ascent of the Florida-born composer, producer and trumpet ace – the second son of civil rights activist William Henry Croker – continues.

This 13-track oratorio takes the ancient-to-future vibe and invests it with fury, connection and understanding, makes it a call-to-arms. While the notion of history repeating itself finds voice in the cycles so intrinsic to jazz, there’s a hero’s journey in here too – non-linear and meandering, staccato and golden, lit by trumpet and immersed in blackness.

Having set out his stall on solo opener ‘4Knowledge’, a creationary swirl of trumpet, Fender and nature-inspired effects, and its horns-to-the-fore follow-up ‘Soul Call Vibrate’, Croker introduces the first of a series of guests that accompany his (ad)venture: singer Ari Lennox, with co-lyricist, London’s Ego Ella May, on backing vocals. Sax king Gary Bartz, now a de rigueur presence for leftfield jazz cognoscenti.

On track nine, positioned around the hero’s defeat of the enemy (think Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth), singer Malaya celebrates on ‘Happy Feet (for Dancers)’, a warm breeze of a clubfloor filler; Wyclyf Jean spits verses that tell of human rights and revolution on ‘Station of the Union 444’, a track designed for thinking and moving and coinciding with the hero’s road back. ‘Hero Stomp: A Future Past’, with its horn blasts, piano riffs and rootsy West African balafon samples, suggests a resurrection. ‘Pathways’, the closer, seizes the elixir, celebrating wisdom, heralding freedom, acknowledging the ancestors.