The band behind Drawing Breath one of last year’s best jazz albums, jazz-rockers’ Blue Touch Paper’s follow-up to 2012’s fiery debut Stand Well Back, are on tour this month. Led by the Mask Orchestra's Colin Towns, a prolific film and TV composer with a strong international profile in jazz stretching back to the 1990s, Blue Touch Paper with its post-Bitches Brew attitude and occult literary references is an Anglo-German electric sextet featuring Towns’ highly individual keyboards style showcasing sampled sounds surging from the top of a powerful band in which he’s joined by Troyka guitarist Chris Montague, electric bassist Edward Maclean, super slick drummer Benny Greb, percussionist Stephan Maass, and Loose Tubes’ Mark Lockheart. Dates include the Vortex, London on 24 February, and Band on the Wall, Manchester on 28 Feb.

Blue Touch Paper, above