Drummer rapper Kassa Overall is even more stimulating than usual here and he sets the bar high. Live is usually the test of knowing anything and his midnight Soho show at the Pizza in 2019 with Mike King proved what the impressions of a few earlier albums had long hinted but whose very artifice had clouded over some of the detail. Not so here. The American moves up a gear. And if you refuse to believe that jazz and hip-hop can be fused then look away now. But Overall is not trying to prove it can. What he does do is to put a lot of complementary styles, whether vocals, rap or instrumentals, alongside each other in an at times zany forum. It may not be commedia dell'arte but ''That's the way to do it!" to quote Mr Punch. Collaborator Vijay Iyer here on 'The Score Was Made' did his own version of scalding spoken word critique far more acutely with Mike Ladd a decade ago. But here the pianist proves just as compelling by going into a glitchily minimalist-electronica expressionist space. And it is the best thing on a very accessible and likeable album that is both about art and entertainment. Elsewhere Kassa who is funny and witty at the microphone can be serious too and grooves given his considerable prowess as a drummer. If you want to delve deeper into his work then the 5-star Modern Ancestors the fine Carmen Lundy record he is all over is a good place to start. Best riffs here are found from Abdullah Ibrahim head Andrae Murchison having fun rewiring 'It ain't necessarily so' and 'Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho'. Theo Croker does the biz on the quietly moving 'The Lava Is Calm.'

• Kassa plays the Gillesian We Out Here in August down in Dorset. Kassa Overall, photo: press