Album: Roller Trio, Roller Trio (F-ire)

Perhaps because they’re never going to win, there’s a strong sense of randomness, attitude-striking or plain old hype to the selection of the Mercury Prize’s token jazz finalists.

The virtues of this year’s choice, the Leeds sax/guitar/drums unit Roller Trio, are only occasionally apparent on a debut album that, heard cold, can seem little more than a mildly promising demo that sounds less like the future of jazz and more like a re-working of 1980s punk-jazzers Pinski Zoo.