The 28-year-old Slovenian pianist Marko Churnchetz spends much of his time journeying between his home country and New York. The big smoke is where he got together with the quartet on Devotion a recording that features the imaginative, sinewy tenor sax of the Jamaican American-based musician Mark Shim (a largely forgotten early millennium Blue Note recording artist and Greg Osby sideman), and one of the many edge-of-the-seat young New York rhythm sections in bassist Christopher Tordini and Justin Brown, the sticksman for Ambrose Akinmusire's regular quintet. This is quite an exhilarating ride for fans of the kind of stuff that's going on in New York's contemporary sharp-angled, rhythm-orientated, left-field jazz clubs with the band burning inventively through a set of the pianist's originals. Churnchetz is Herbie Hancock-like at times, switching suddenly to the slightly cheesy, funk-synth, but in a context closer to the kind of contemporary electric jazz played by Chris Potter's Underground, though without any loss of focus or intensity. An international debut recording that sees an impressively fiery new pianist off to a flying start.