Trudi’s Songbook Vol. 1

UK saxophonist, flautist and bandleader Tenderlonious’ quartet project Rudi Rushton dropped their second album in 2017, a six-track collection of deep, intense, superbly-played contemporary jazz, flavoured with hip hop, afrobeat and soul influences. You get four lengthy tracks broken up by a pair of sub-two-minute tracks: a brief, exhilarating journey through the highs and lows of expressive, improvisational jazz, and a swaggering, superfly, ninety seconds of highly refined jazzfunk. There’s some Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters in the musical DNA of the awesomely angular nine-minute opening track, which features soaring solo playing alternated with supa-tight ensemble riffing, while much of the rest of the album uses Afrobeat or Latin rhythms as its percussive base. Prayer For Yusef meanwhile is a brooding, stalking, minimal jazz paean based around a single repeating bass figure, which gradually ascends to an intense, almost spiritual finale. A confident, accomplished hybrid jazz album where every solo feels purposeful, each rhythmic interchange or mood switch supports the whole, and there’s no extraneous material — every part matters.