Anatta, the title of this new F-IRE label quartet album to be launched at the Vortex – debuting tenor saxophonist Alex Merritt, above, with old hands Tetra bassist Sam Lasserson, pianist John Turville and drummer Jeff Williams – comes from Buddhism and means ‘no self’. A New Cool School record it relies on that diffident, seemingly casual cultured cold storage bebop style familiar from Warne Marsh, Lennie Tristano and vintage Lee Konitz records.

Merritt, who studied at the Birmingham Conservatoire, has a softly spoken slightly gruff sound that navigates a lot of territory often manipulating little half scales and elaborative forays, almost pushing at the tune to reveal some hidden trapdoor.

And he is elegantly backed by Williams, Turville and Lasserson. The band play around with contrafacts that Merritt has written based on lines of Tristano, Marsh and Konitz plus the material also includes treatments of Monk, Eubie Blake and Thelonious Monk material and Merritt’s own tunes that match well.

You might think you have stepped back into the 1950s and entered in on some post-midnight jam session in New York when you hear this or even have found yourself transported into a photograph by someone like W. Eugene Smith. Yet it’s more a successful musical universe the four have created with the benefit of 20/20 21st century vision than any laboured sense of pastiche.

Gig details are here