While the nation waits for our politicians’ talk of ‘levelling up’ to be matched by some action, we can take some encouragement from way that the Northern Powerhouse of jazz that's been forging ahead under its own steam. Young guns Abbie Finn and her saxophone-playing partner Harry Keeble are both Leeds graduates who have embedded themselves into the thriving scene in Abbie's native North East, working across a variety of projects that base their exploration on the mainstream jazz legacy.

This is their third recording as a trio with veteran bassist Paul Grainger, and the first to feature all original compositions by Finn. Her crisply, energetically accurate drumming drives each track forward with irresistible momentum – whether it's the brisk hard bop of ‘Jazz The Cat’, the mutated 5/4 latin of ‘The Warren’ or the mallet rumba textures of ‘The Labyrinth’. The latter tune shows Finn stretching out her writing chops as well, combining some interesting metric twists with memorable melody, and ‘Mirador De Los Poleos’ shows that this melodic facility is not just a one-off, as well as showcasing Keeble's satisfyingly robust tone. There's plenty of opportunity for him to deploy his plentiful stock of bop language as a base for clearly structured improvisations and while he occasionally sounds as though he's pushing at the limit of his resources in this bare bones set up, his swing, creativity and melodicism are never at fault.

Grainger is a resolutely unflamboyant, solid, grounding presence throughout, anchoring the compositions effectively and providing a rock solid base for the straight swingers as well as various rhythmic excursions, like the stripped down funk fusion of ‘So It's True’. The trio format takes a lot of creative juice to sustain over the course of an album and this offering has juice aplenty, full of original melody and rhythmic vitality and underscored with positive youthful energy and promise for the future.