Beats & Pieces, the Manchester big band whose idiomatic range and flat-out attack has drawn comparisons to Loose Tubes, return with a second album. Six tracks here are leader and composer Ben Cottrell’s, the seventh is a sultry arrangement of David Bowie’s Let’s Dance, all showing that the young band’s collectively grooving energy – and the gifted Cottrell’s composing – have moved up a few notches further from 2012’s aptly named Big Ideas. They embrace old-school big-band bravura (such as the heavy-hitting Rocky, with its tumbling countermelodies and flaring brass); backbeat-driven soul-jazz swelling to massive horn harmonies (Pop); Steve Reichian keyboard minimalism growing steadily orchestral (Rain); the richly layered Havmann was originally a long tone-poem Cottrell developed in Norway in honour of an Antony Gormley statue that rises out of a fjord. The pumping, R&B guitar-powered Hendo, showcasing fine soprano saxophonist Sam Healey, also drops an exuberant hint as to how hard they rock on a live show.
