Joe Acheson Quartet @ The Jazz Bar, 25 Apr

Despite being one of the strangest Triptych line-ups yet, there was still some magnificently forward thinking music in the program this year, though not strictly limited to it. Right from the off, the Joe Acheson Quartet are a surprise, featuring - as they do tonight - six members: two drummers, a laptopper, Joe Acheson on bass and an impressive array of samplers, dials, cables, knobs, and levers, plus a violinist and cellist both poised in front of their music stands as if this was the Usher Hall. The resulting music is a beguiling, psychedelic, lush, sweeping and groovy hybrid of trip-hop swagger, discerning drum’n’bass, epic soundscapes, funky electronica, cosmic zouk, melancholy space synth, Ozric Tentacles-esque danceability, and impeccable nu-classical. But above all, Joe Acheson’s music is delightfully cinematic and makes out of the post-rock ideals the very music that they should spawn.