Real Book North West Band: Real Book North West

Real Books are jazz improvisers' bibles – anthologies of standard song chord sequences that deliver all the signposts you need to play in any straightahead context with any unfamiliar partners. The Jazz Services-funded Real Book North West Band has reworked the idea for a productive corner of the UK scene – taking up the idea of Manchester keyboardist John Ellis that the jazz composers of the north-west could produce their very own Real Book of originals. It's a well-played, if slightly reined-in session by a good postbop band including polished saxophonist Andy Schofield and former Loose Tubes bassist/composer Steve Berry. However, the standout soloist is unsurprisingly the great Mike Walker on guitar – who threads a deliciously understated Jim Hall-like lyricism into the bebop swingers and ballads, and unleashes an explosive, Hendrix-descended mix of hard-plucked funk chording and whistling high notes on the raunchier episodes. Some of the music has a Methenyesque Latin grace, some of the bebop draws Schofield into Lee Konitz-reminiscent alto sax improv, some has an attractively north-Euro, ECM-label dream-dance feel – but the most pungent is when Walker is unleashed on contemporary fusion. Inevitably this multi-idiom set has a compilation-like air, and the quality of the writing is a bit uneven, but it's an inspiration to the UK jazz scene outside London, delivered with skilful affection.