Album: Byard Lancaster, Funny Funky Rib Crib, (Kindred spirits)

R&B honking and Afrobeat rhythms meet spiritual Coltrane/ Sanders-style Seventies free jazz. Ex-Sun Ra saxophonist Lancaster swapped Philly for Paris in the Nixon era, where this shockingly contemporary-sounding album was recorded.

The band is a Franco-African aggregation and Lancaster plays a bit of piano and flute as well as sax. It's powerful groove-based music, and although it becomes repetitious, that's probably the point.

Pick of the Album: 'Work and Pray': deep funk goes inner space