‘Brink’ is an impressive calling-card for the performance abilities of the Meridian Arts Ensemble, an American brass quintet that’s given extra lift by John Ferrari’s kit drumming. Although my heart sank to find yet another classically orientated chamber group swearing crossover allegiance to Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa, the visceral quality of their playing certainly walks the walk. Brian McWhorter’s lead trumpet is punchy, while the funky tailgates (where appropriate) of Raymond Stewart’s tuba are a real asset. This new CD contains three of the group’s latest commissions but sadly the quality of their playing isn’t matched by consistency in their repertoire.

David Sanford’s Corpus is the most sophisticated and imaginative composition included. It is a latter-day instrumental reinvention of a Baroque cantata that begins with a flourish but soon opens up to reveal composition innards, stuttering as they put themselves back together. The piece is based on what Sanford enigmatically describes as ‘a single underlying chorale’ which rises to the surface in the ‘De profundis’ movement to be overlaid by other material.R>Nick Didkovsky’s Slim in Beaten Dreamers sounds like it has similar aspirations to Corpus but lacks Sanford’s inner ear, and its episodic structure becomes rather meandering. Downtown guitarist/improviser Elliott Sharp contributes Beyond the Curve which considering, as the booklet-notes remind us, he’s ‘pioneered ways of applying fractal geometry, chaos theory and biological metaphors to musical composition’ comes across as sounding compositionally naive, with rather vanilla triadic material undergoing basic transformations. Great band, shame about the song.