Julian Lourau: Quartet Saigon

French saxophonist Julian Lourau, a soulmate of American M-Base avant-funk pioneer Steve Coleman and a visitor to London's Vortex next week, has come much closer to the mainstream with this album. Lourau is a forceful virtuoso who can play the daylights out of uptempo postbop, as he demonstrates over Otis Brown III's scalding swing pulse and squirming unison-runs with pianist Laurent Coq on this set's jazziest track, Baron Samedi. But the rhythm-stretching side of him is mostly displaced here by rather bland song-themes, plaintive cafe-dance waltzes and dramatically semaphored improv buildups. There's undoubtedly plenty of variety in the material and the playing, but a soft-grooving account of the standard A House Is Not a Home is close to elevator music, and a few of the saxophonist's melodramatically-spiralling ascents or swirls over McCoy Tyner-like piano vamps are accomplished but faintly exercise-like. It's often passionately and accessibly lyrical, but the surprises are strictly rationed.