In the early 90s Ronny Jordan became a member of an exclusive club: he had a UK chart hit with a jazz instrumental. That track, a dance-floor version of Miles Davis's So What?, cemented the guitarist's reputation as the king of acid jazz. But soon afterwards he packed his bags and left for New York, where he has been for the past six years. This week he was back in Britain to promote a new CD, A Brighter Day.

And a promotion gig was exactly what it was, albeit one redeemed by the elan with which the twin-keyboard quintet sustained an irresistible funk pulse. Jordan first ran through his early successes (1992's The Antidote onward), then rattled down the track list for the new release. But his band was admirably equipped to impart freshness to an idiom of predictable punctuation. The Hammond organ breaks in particular exhibited all the harmonic intricacy and firebreathing climaxes of the Grant Green/Larry Young collaborations that have clearly meant so much to Jordan.

The contrast between the seething, many-layered intensity of the rhythm section and Jordan's reserved and lightly struck guitar sound gives this music much of its subtlety - and if there isn't much in it for improv fans, that's not the point. Jordan himself sounds more at ease with longer lines, and the group sound is mellow, elegantly executed radio-play music with a jazzy gloss. That should be quite enough for the sizeable fan club who are at last able to hear Ronny Jordan on his home turf again.