Nye Banfield is a young London-based tenor player with a big sound - full voiced and declamatory with an attractive soft edge, he’d be a great hard bop player, and his frontline partner Mark Kavuma has already made a name for himself as a modern exponent of the glorious Blue Note tradition, so we might expect echoes of the great Blakey sextet from this line-up.

However Banfield’s bio also lists Radiohead, modern classical and contemporary New York jazz among his influences and this album is a reflective set of original compositions, all in straight 8ths feel, evoking the calming, widescreen influence of his rural Leicestershire roots rather than a frantic bop cityscape. The three-horn frontline lends some impressive heft to ‘Rockhopper’ while superb pianist Rupert Cox’s rippling Rhodes adds an additional darkness to the proggy ‘Bellarom Gold’ that evinces the influence of Thom Yorke and co.

Kavuma shows his versatility, attacking the tunes with a brassy panache, soaring in solo over the subtly shifting chords of ‘E11’. The rhythm section are uniformly excellent, with storming performances from Hamish Nockles-Moore on bass and his almost-namesake Ewan Moore on drums - newcomer Wilf Diamond lays it down memorably on the twisty ostinatos of ‘Pocket Tissue Blues’, which also has a standout solo from the leader. ‘Song For Grandad’ by contrast harks back to Banfield’s Welsh roots with the stately gravitas of a Methodist hymn played by a brass band.

A long awaited and richly rewarding debut from an important emerging voice.