Motion is the very good debut from Jason Swinscoe's 6 piece jazz band featuring DJ Food's Patrick Carpenter and others. Swinscoe was previously on the FunKungFusion compilation and did remixes for Coldcut and Ryuichi Sakamoto. His music looks back to 60's jazz like the movie soundtracks of Roy Budd, who threw drum breaks into the live mix of orchestra, acoustic bass, piano, horns and woodwinds (recently reissued on cd and audiophile vinyl). The Cinematic Orchestra tracks "Owed To The Big Sea" and "Blue Birds" especially feature the Kruppa-like big beats of Roy Budd's tracks.

Even on the more evocative, soundtrack-like pieces such as "Night Of The Iguana" it is the jazzy drums that keep things moving. This mellower side of the Cinematic Orchestra, tunes like "Diabolus," recall the arranged jazz of 60's names like Teo Macero or Alice Coltrane. But in fact, Swinscoe arranges his jazz orchestra in a contemporary way, similar in method to Amon Tobin or Funki Porcini, who cut & paste the playing of live musicians into seamless compositions that have progressed in a positive way from the earlier call & response patterns of the Mo Wax-style trip hop blueprint.

While nu-jazzers like Carl Craig abandon controlled forms for improvisation, and run into the problems of routine sounds and self-indulgent musicians, so far the Ninja Tune jazz composers like Swinscoe are successful at being sophisticated without being "prog."