Moxxy Edition Records****

London-based trio Troyka (guitarist Chris Montague, keyboardist Kit Downes and drummer Joshua Blackmore) drag the traditional Hammond organ trio format kicking and screaming into the 21st century with a high-octane follow up to their rapturously received debut. Troyka’s raucous, edgy sound owes more to rock and dance music than it does to Jimmy Smith. Montague alternates between sinuous lines, spacey effects and raw power chords; Downes creates dense polyphonic waves of sound that crash on the shore of contemporary harmony; and Downes’s drumming artfully subverts the thud of hip-hop.

This set of original compositions from all three members offer plenty of light and shade – and perhaps favouring the latter. There are echoes of The Tony Williams Lifetime and Wayne Krantz's free-improv trio, but those sounds are overlaid with a punkish sensibility, a wry sense of humour, and melodic and rhythmic left-turns that repeatedly eschew the obvious. troyka.co.uk