The press release for this album, out on Kurt Rosenwinkel's own imprint, starts by lauding Mr Alexander's Instagram profile and number of followers, rather than, say, his tenure at Berklee. As the album is released on the unfashionable digital download and CD rather than the hipster vinyl, and Insta continues to lose ground to TikTok, we may wonder if Mr Alexander is riding the tech wave forwards or backwards.

Regardless, this stripped-back debut fully justifies the Rosenwinkel endorsement - Cecil Alexander is a superb guitarist in the bop tradition, with bags of taste, swing and chops. He favours a dry, crisp semi-acoustic tone with plenty of string attack over the recent fashion for the soft reverb-drenched sound, and works with dancing, rhythmically precise single-note lines rather than the kind of impressionistically open, extended chord voicings you’ll hear from the likes of Gilad Hekselman. As such he's identifiably following in the tradition of the mighty Wes, George Benson and Grant Green (who gets a namecheck on the ballad ‘Bright Green’) rather than John Abercrombie or Mick Goodrick, and doing a fine job as well.

A Donny Hathaway cover veers close to smooth jazz, albeit in a very beguiling way, but the twisty high-velocity ‘Shug’ shows what he can do when he puts his foot on the gas: his speed, groove, crisp articulation and flow of melodic ideas are truly impressive, matched with a real soulful feeling for the blues. The supporting cast do a sterling job, but Alexander is the star throughout. If there are no surprises here, there are no flaws either: this is a very likeable record, and guitar fans in particular should check it out.