You probably know towering tenorman Escoffery well from his gigs here in the UK with the Mingus Big Band and recordings with trumpeter Tom Harrell's Quintet. Of Jamaican parentage, he was actually born in London, but raised in America. Now 40, this is Wayne's working band for the past couple of years. And what a line-up. The opening album title-track, ‘Vortex’, is probably the most ferocious you'll have heard in ages and shows off each player's immense technical ability and their original approach to harmony and rhythm. It really is a scorcher. Ralph Peterson, surely one of the most propulsive drummers in jazz today, wrote ‘Acceptance’ and co-wrote (with Wayne) ‘Judgement’. They are followed by a mellow Harrell tune, which apparently the composer has never recorded and, this writer's personal favourite, the 15/4 ‘The Devil's Den', which substitutes another great drummer Kush Abadey for Peterson and adds percussionist Acevedo, while Jeremy Pelt makes it a trumpet-tenor frontline for the medium-tempo swinger, ‘In His Eyes’. But it's Escoffrey's record – as an exciting soulful soloist, a highly intelligent composer of tunes with strong impact and a bandleader who knows how to get the best out of amazing musicians. And I don't think he likes Trump! In fact, there's a strong political element to this recording as Wayne expresses his reaction to the 45th President and the impact his regime, on top of the recent killings of black Americans by white police, is having on Escoffery's eight-year-old son.