This sharp young Manchester band led by drummer Johnny Hunter feature personnel from the city’s acclaimed Beats & Pieces big band, and they were an engaging presence on the Efpi label’s recent showcase gig in London. They sometimes sound like classic bebop players, uncorking punchy sax/trumpet hooks over Hunter’s bustling percussion and Stewart Wilson’s buoyant bass-walks, and both trumpeter Graham South and tenor saxophonist Ben Watte exert an intelligently creative grasp on 1960s late-bop’s succinct earthiness. But Hunter’s percussion approach is fuelled from many other sources, including 21st-century street grooves, post-rock, free-improv, and music from the Middle East and Turkey, and the more freely time-bending and improvisationally open episodes here often suggest a contemporary New York downtown band. The brooding and then spiritedly dancing Ayça combines Arabic scales, uninhibited avant-swing, and Watte’s measured tenor meditations. The title track is a warm, slow-swaying ensemble theme with a Billy Strayhorn connection in its later stages, and the atmospheric and almost motionless finale imaginatively re-examines the set’s preceding themes. Despite the bop hooks, this music might be a bit introspective for some, but the band admirably reflects the independent creativity of the new Manchester scene.
