Howie B – Down With The Dawn (HB Recordings/PIAS) *** 

Howie B may look brilliant on paper but on CD he isn’t much to write home about. The man has worked alongside some top names so why is it that this doesn’t really do anything for me? It doesn’t help with all 11 tracks being purely instrumental and some of the tracks just seem to go round in a loop for what seems like an eternity. There’s a track on here called Kazoo that features a kazoo and with me liking kazoos and all that I thought I might have liked it, but unfortunately I didn’t.

Russ Petcher, 39, bassist, Liversedge

Breton – War Room Stories (Cut Tooth) *** 

This is a bit of a tricky album to pin down to any particular genre. In fact I’m not even sure it fits any. It’s got blends of all types in it ranging from electro pop through hip-hop and into rock/Indie with all flavours in between. The use of the Macedonian Radio Symphony Orchestra on some of the tracks works beautifully. It all makes for a very interesting sound that may take a few plays before you really get your head round it. It’s Breton’s second album and not having heard the first I am now more curious to find out a bit more about where they have come from musically.

Nigel Goodman, 56, teacher, Heaton

Marius Neset – Lion (Act) ** 

Norwegian saxophonist Marius Neset is not yet 30, and he already has several acclaimed albums with smaller forces to his name. With this release of new and adapted work for 12-piece big band, he sets out to work on a larger complex canvas. It’s intense, dramatic and finely wrought, with numerous changes of style and direction. Some tracks are adapted from two previous albums, Birds and Golden Xplosion, others are original. Neset was a pupil of Django Bates at Copenhagen’s Rhythmic Music Conservatory, and that influence is to the foremost, especially in the complexity of the rhythmic constructions. That said, it was not to my taste at all, seeming to be merely a collection of disjointed noise.

Daphne Rowbotham, 63, retired, Shipley