Jazz has earned itself a particularly bad name in the past 30 years. It gets itself associated with that particularly awful pretentious crap that gets spewed out as muzak in coffee houses or by terribly arty people in black polo necks. ‘New Comer’ pilfers a lot of its sounds from jazz, not the 1940s swing or 1950s jive, not the energetic stuff but the lounge-music-in-a-coffee-house side of things. Luckily this has been balanced out by a mixture of house beats, vocalists and a synthesizer. The result is surprisingly good.

Nevertheless ‘New Comer’ treads a very fine line between being too smug at its own eclecticism and being one damn good soul album. Luckily it often falls in the latter camp. The highlights of this album are the songs with a vocal: Indigo Blues is a gorgeous..er…bluesy number, True To Me With Ladybird would make many a soul lover happy as Ladybird’s voice has that “iron fist in a velvet glove” quality that is more Aretha Franklin than Mariah Carey. **

Despite Llorca’s claim of bringing Jazz to a younger generation through his idea of “Jazz House” (and don't get me wrong this would work very well in clubs) this is essentially for the “more mature” music listener. People in their late twenties who’ve given up on partying non-stop and need a little sit down and something to play as background music when their friends come round for dinner.