Sometimes you forget how manicured and bland a lot of over-produced jazz can be. That's when free improvisation moves in and wins and it takes a record like Soul Food to stop forgetting. We have become too normalised to big corporate jazz culture when all the rough edges are smoothed out and blindsided producers forget about freedom and prefer to fake the feeling.

Hippie jazz? Yes, I suppose. There's no faking here. The sound has a great gravity-less sense of motion to it. Christopher Parker, you might know his work from the excellent Dopolarians, as a pianist might as well be a drummer. His touch has a Cecil Taylor-like elegance to it. He holds back judiciously when he needs to because he knows the sound is at the mercy of the overall pulse and rampaging beat.

Sometimes stark vocals and the very wide open percussive feel intervene in a raging swell as if an anarchy will destroy the whole sound. Quite a band with Gerald Cleaver on drums, although the mix does him no favours, the vocals of Kelley Hurt (Parker's wife) in the overall sound operate as much as painter of bold sonic brushstrokes as anything. And yet the album's strength is in a collective group-think. If you are looking for yards and yards of trumpet from Jaimie Branch you won't get any of that because Soul Food is not an extended blowing record at all.

Bass icon William Parker is the presiding genius factor, adding wicked shakuhachi flute as well in places. The wake up and smell the coffee moments are when reedist Daniel Carter comes in on the brilliant 15-minute long epic 'Truth and Fiction'. SG. Out on 29 October

Christopher Parker, photo: Brian Chilson