The Emile Parisien Quartet l-r: Julien Touéry, Julien Loutelier, Ivan Gélugne, Emile Parisien. Photo: ACT

The more contemporary side of the French saxophonist Emile Parisien is on display here. The quartet together for some two decades is Parisien on soprano and effects with pianist Julien Touéry, double bassist Ivan Gélugne and drummer Julien Loutelier who also contributes some triggered electronics. There is great humanity in Parisien's sound particularly in his soloing on 'Nano Fromage,' a morse code like insistent repeated riff from Gélugne enhancing a labyrinth in all tendresse.

Kept fairly concise (in jazz terms), the longest tune clocks in at just under 6-and-a-half minutes. There's plenty of blowing and that's good given that 41-year-old Parisien is a formidable soloist. Mysterious electronics on 'Ve 1999' are OK but perhaps a bit old hat to some. That is a problem with using electronics as the technology changes so quickly and it is easy to sound dated even when this isn't. Fine drummer Loutelier on 'Pistache Cowboy' (amusing title) reminds us of the touch of Marc Michel a bit. The two-part 'Wine Time' suite begins with walking bass from Gélugne and some very tasty responses from Parisien who harmonises well with Touéry.

I lost patience a bit - shoot me - with some of the later tracks. Métanuits is an EP favourite of ours from the saxist's work on the Siggi Loch founded label issuing this latest recording, ACT. But the French jazzer's best work that we know of was live album Sfumato, a 2018 release - recorded in Marciac a three-hour drive from Cahors in the Lot département where Parisien hails from. Playing Sidney Bechet’s ‘Temptation Rag’ on that record was a for the ages moment and makes us join the dots with the way Bechet has inspired generations of top musicians in France and even as far west as over the sea to Ireland.

Sidney Bechet, Sunday afternoons in winter

And the tuning in of stations in Europe on the wireless

Before, yes before this was the way it was

As the poet put it. From 'See Me Through, Part II (Just a Closer Walk with Thee)' - Hymns to the Silence (Van Morrison 1991, 1 min 48 sec mark)

Bechet is the father of the soprano saxophone. And so it it is more than applicable to think of his sound when someone as good as Parisien plays. The way Bechet inspired not just tradsters like Chris Barber and Van Morrison even when the context is wildly different - in Van's case above, highly gospelised and poetic. But also such iconoclasm jumped the snark to span across the arts to some of the great poets - Philip Larkin springs to mind particularly.

That note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes

Like New Orleans reflected on the water,

And in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes,

From 'For Sidney Bechet' - The Whitsun Weddings (Faber, 1964)

In Parisien's case on that fantastic version of 'Temptation Rag' with Wynton - New Orleans, Bechet and Wynton's home town, and early jazz is a blink away.

The ACT label has had a very quiet year so far in terms of a succès d'estime anyway despite the usual flurry of activity and a number of current and upcoming releases - there is always something in the pipeline and Little North came closest to blowing us away most on While You Wait. But the only thing that we have really got excited about is the pre-release track 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: the Ecstasy of Gold' from the new Grégoire Maret-Romain Colin Ennio out this month. It sends shivers up the spine - a track that we have playlisted time and time again. Nevertheless returning to Let Them Cook, Parisien rarely disappoints and doesn't on said platter. It would be churlish - and without bending over backwards at all to kiss the bishop's ring - to admit when such sheer jazz gastronomy as these morsels tantalise to move to suggest otherwise.