Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, 100 Club, London

Damon Albarn wallops this critic on the shoulder as he exuberantly dances and yells. Jude Law is even further gone to my right, eyes closed and body shaking. For once, they don't really stand out from a crowd similarly lost in an old sort of jazz communion. The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble's first, self-titled UK album on Albarn's label, Honest Jon's, is being launched tonight after five US LPs, with a support slot at Blur's Hyde Park show to follow. And down in this basement club which was one of jazz's London homes for so long, the years roll back. The Ensemble's 9 young men bring sweating and dancing to swinging brass instruments back to its floor.

Remarkably, the eight brass players are all sons of the Chicago trumpeter Phil Cohran (drummer Christopher Anderson makes nine). Cohran's brief spell with Sun Ra's Arkestra is less notable than his evangelical promotion of avant-garde jazz as the music was squeezed into the margins in his black community. The Ensemble have played on the streets and in subway stations, with YouTube footage spreading the word. When they played London last year with Albarn, Tony Allen and Baaba Maal among the guests, it was clear that they had fervent UK fans there only for them. "I'm not sure we're even in London right now," says one trumpeter, clearly delighted that word has finally spread after a decade's striving.

Tonight they use hip-hop crowd participation tricks (the "la-deez" get many call-outs), knowing that music is an outgrowth of jazz. But it is the drilled yet exuberant physicality of their playing which recalls jazz's urban dance roots. They swing their instruments while still blowing a martial beat, and their sweat isn't just from the basement heat. On "Mars", cymbals sound like smashing glass as the sousaphone takes the bass-end with the deep honk of an elephant stampede, and they show how warmly comforting and sharply aggressive massed brass can be. Percussive but emotionally subtle, it acts as a serenade when the tempo is briefly lowered here, with short blasts of lead trumpet acting as jagged splinters to prick you awake. "Party Started" speeds and thickens as the crowd's reaction fills the air.

There's no space for the pensive melancholy of, say, a Miles Davis solo. But you can detect constant echoes of the hopeful-beauty-amidst-desolation of black jazz and soul which was pervasive at the start of the 1970s. Curtis Mayfield's sad symphonic funk, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and their father's fight for morally upright, challenging jazz are clear inspirations here, retooled for the hip-hop era. "War"'s brief fanfare and "No Justice" fight degradation in that blissful spirit, and the latter is when the crowd really bounce. Moments of near-frenzy on-stage are finely calibrated. The Ensemble are their father's sons, never letting their musicianship drop. They don't need to compromise as they return jazz from future art music to this sweatbox stomp.