True to its title, this debut from 34-year-old New Yorker Brown defies genre. A jazz drummer, here accompanied by JD Allen's tenor sax and Chris Sholar's guitar, Brown was inspired by southern spirituals, with the Gee's Bend gospel singers sampled throughout. The resulting soundscapes are a dialogue between the present and a collective past of suffering and salvation, with echoes of Coltrane supplied by Allen's supple blowing. The mood is raw and angular on Mean World, contemplative on Somebody's Knocking, with its Indian karnatic vocals, and I Said, where the piano of Geri Allen shines. As powerful as it is ambitious.