Founded by producer Tom Albach primarily to release the music of the legendary Horace Tapscott, Nimbus West became an iconic label in the late 1970s and ‘80s, also issuing important work by Linda Hill, Adele Sebastian and Roberto Miranda among others. This excellent live triple album features some of the other key artists who were part of the LA scene, including the excellent pianist Nate Morgan, perhaps best known for his 1984 classic Retribution, Reparation, and saxophonist Jesse Sharps, who was one of the most impressive soloists in Tapscott’s Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra.

Together the band of bandleaders has the kind of improvisatory verve and ensemble cohesion one would expect from players who understand how to play as one and all, while making the requisite space for individual expression. But perhaps more importantly, they show that the 1980s was a fascinating decade for artists who were able to build on the vocabulary of post-bop (developed in the 1950s and ‘60s) without lapsing into cliché. The spirit of Mcoy Tyner flows through much of the material which moves liberally between modalism, swing and Afro-Latin rhythms, with the combination of Morgan’s driving piano and Rickey Kelly’s rippling vibraphone enhancing a set full of stirring original pieces such as the wonderfully-named ‘Big Spliff.’ There is also an imaginative take on Monk’s evergreen ‘Well, You Needn’t.’