The Rhythmagic Orchestra

Compelling, Latin jazz-leaning stuff from some of Britain and Cuba’s finest, this is released on the ever-intriguing Impossible Ark imprint – home to other notables such as Sara Mitra and Jeb Loy Nichols. The story behind the album begins with a cunning plan hatched over glasses of rum by two friends – producer Ben Lamdin of the brave and youthful free jazz outfit Nostalgia 77 Octet and the Afro-Caribbean and Latin music spinning DJ Hugo Mendez. Both share a love for the giants of Afro-Cuban jazz, and the Rhythmagic Orchestra were founded to take said love into the 21st century. Its members are its own best advertisement, many of them plucked from the fecund likes of the Alex Wilson Band, Jazz Jamaica, Ska Cubano, the Heliocentrics and Nostalgia 77 itself.

The opener, an instrumental take on Nina Simone’s luscious ‘African Mailman’ with its tight percussion, choppy piano montuno and melismatic flute flurries lets us know what we’re dealing with; the louche ‘Cha Cha De Juventud’, all guiro scrapes and punchy yet velveteen horns, is a composition co-written by arranger and saxophonist Johnny Spall (of ostalgia 77) that doffs its cap to Machito and his ilk. There are paeans, too, to such hallowed jazzers as Art Blakey (‘Sakeena’) and Horace Silver (‘Mary Lou’), while ‘Fish Market Dance’, a good-humoured concoction of forward-looking jazz and smooth Latin grooves, comes courtesy of Spall and Lamdin himself. New material sits comfortably alongside evergreens from the masters: the closer, a storming version of Dizzy and Chano Pozo’s ‘Manteca’, does the legacy proud. An outfit to watch.