New York’s Village Vanguard could not have been a more adequate venue for Steve Coleman & Five Elements to celebrate a quite remarkable 35-year history. If the deeply rooted relationship between the saxophonist-leader, bass guitarist Anthony Tidd and drummer Sean Rickman plays out in an unerringly seamless negotiation of complex rhythms and meters, then the interaction with trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, who joined the ensemble at a latter stage (2000) is no less impressive. Coleman’s recognition of James Brown and Charlie Parker as major innovators in modern black music has enabled him to create a sound that has an almost cardiographic quality, whereby the strong pulse of the songs undergoes varied cycles or waves that lead to fraught peaks and troughs, all executed with the kind of sharp precision and timing that betray exemplary chemistry between the players as well as a sense of flawless mechanisation in the man-made beats.

The resulting sensation retains the physicality of funk but has a structural sophistication that also draws on a whole range of other stimuli, above all Afro-Asian culture, to good effect. If Coleman’s patented, influential vocabulary, as well as his punchy, agitated horn playing, meets the expectations raised by his large discography then it is the presence of Kokayi that is notable here. The rapper-lyricist is a reminder of Coleman’s engagement with hip-hop in the 1990s, but more to the point he warrants his status as a true wordsmith because of his disarming facility with all manner of verbal expression.

The skips from tightly marshaled rhymes to fluid freestyle to inventively shaped sung lines lock powerfully into the intricate unison playing and dovetailing elsewhere, making it clear that Kokayi is often a kind of centrifugal force in the band rather than a peripheral figure. His appearances hold the interest from a timbral as well as lyrical point of view, placing voice and word right at the heart of advanced instrumental music. The combination is exhilarating, and this performance captures a group that has achieved the ideal of creating a personal language to which it can still bring new intonations.