In recent years the German baritone sax specialist Katharina ‘Tini’ Thomsen has made a name for herself playing in the highly acclaimed Dutch Metropole Orchestra, Brussels Jazz Orchestra and the NDR Bigband among others. It's her lyrically beefy, rough-around-the-edges sound that had caused the likes of Dr John, among others, to come calling. She cranks the animus up for her new mainstream jazz-fusion power quartet Maxsax, a name that would have equally applied to her co-led all-sax quartet Q4. As it is, Thomsen locks horns with UK alto-saxophonist Nigel Hitchcock, whose Sanborn-ish R&B-meets-bebop solo licks are committed and tasteful in spite of treading over-familiar ground. Against high-octane guitar-bass-drums backbeats, the horns' muscular riffage is drawn from innocuous instrumental ‘alt-rock bands such as Foo Fighters, but also with a noticeable surface influence at least from Donny McCaslin's recent post-Bowie bands (as well as that rock icon himself), even though it lacks something of the latter's dark-hued existentialist throb. A boisterous, incredibly high-energy band nonetheless, and a must for the international jazz festival late-night party circuit.