The Shez Raja Collective played a high-octane mix of fresh and older material to launch their new album Mystic Radikal with special guests Andy Sheppard and Monika Lidke at the Pizza Express in Soho last night. With the five-piece which played on the album, featuring Pascal Roggen on violin, Aaron Liddard on woodwinds, Alex Stanford on keyboards and Chris Nickolls on drums, the band soon found their feet as the audience got further into their sound.

Sheppard, one of the country’s foremost saxophonists, and sultry vocalist Lidke were brought on and off the stage at various intervals throughout the evening which could have displaced the group’s energy in different circumstances, but accentuated by the intimacy of the venue, this was a Collective which was both informal and on form. The band played all but three tunes from their latest album Mystic Radikal and opted for brevity over lengthy soloing. The interplay between Roggen and Liddard was good throughout, combining the duality of Raja’s composition with energetic soloing on some of the older material.

Raja himself was near flawless, prowling the stage and clearly enjoying himself. Occasionally, as on ‘Quiverwish’, his tone on the opening came close to emulating Mark King circa 1982, but this soon subsided and gave way to more standard Pastorius and Wooten influences. That said, the Collective rarely pushed the limits of truly quick jazz-funk, only going hell for leather on the time-signature heavy ‘Lost in Venice’ (“in 37/8 time,” according to Raja) and the show-stopping ‘Adrenalize’.

Sheppard’s own interest in Asian and African music bears credence to Raja’s musical template, and there was genuine interest on his part for the music being laid down. Even though he played only four cuts on the second set his performance was outstanding, with thoughtful motifs on tenor as well as a soaring change to soprano on the elegiac yet funky ‘Infatuation’. Indeed his first contribution, an extended workout on ‘Carnival of Colours’, effortlessly combined melodic phrasing with harsher note-heavy passages which almost brought the house down at its close.

Like any band showcasing material for the first time, there were bound to be occasional missteps.The otherwise haunting ‘Angel’s Tears’ provided a moment of uncertainty during the solo section in which Sheppard to his credit came out landing feet first with a considered improvisation, and Stanford’s textural keys were often left far below the mix of the more dominant solo instruments. The Collective play Marlborough tonight, and the Ealing Jazz Festival on 31 July.

– James Bourne