Concord signees Butcher Brown are not new jacks. The Richmond, Virginia band have been operating since the early 2010s like a manifestation of a Questlove fever dream. Instrumentalists who are fluent to a scholarly extent in jazz-funk, and reconstitute the form with a hip-hop perspective, they can also play firebolt fusion with punk intensity. At the same time, they're tough to pin down, having grown a discography of releases for their own Jellowstone, Ropeadope, and Gearbox that includes straight-to-tape and direct-to-disc sessions, a live date, a beat tape, a Fela Kuti tribute, and even a couple standard studio albums. For their major-label debut, they consolidate their known powers and reveal new ones. The quintet, heretofore almost exclusively instrumental, furnish a tense verse from fellow RVA native Fly Anakin with taut boom-bap. More conspicuous on that track, "For the City," is the gruff and vitalizing voice of trumpeter/saxophonist Marcus Tenney, who fronts every few cuts like a guide for the listeners and a hype man for his brothers, not too proud to declare his fellow musicians "the best band in the world." Tenney's vocal intensity peaks in "Hopscotch," where he pulls double duty on trumpet. The cyclonic fury of that interlude leads poetically to an update of "Tidal Wave," the fusion classic drummer William Jeffrey wrote for saxophonist Ronnie Laws (sampled to greatest effect on Black Moon's "Who Got da Props?"). Another late-'70s jazz nugget that gets a muscular makeover is James Mtume and Reggie Lucas' "Love Lock," recorded by Mtume the group and by Flora Purim; on the original, Lucas refrained from his dive-bombing guitar attack, but Morgan Burrs' work here sounds inspired by it. Butcher Brown can't help but sprinkle the originals with references, too. The sleigh bells and DJ Harrison's piano in "Fonkadelica," for instance, might be deliberate nods to Eric B. & Rakim and Dr. Dre, but they come off like improvisational collage and add up to something fresh. The musicians are at their best here when the interplay is free-spirited and seemingly most communicative, as on "Cabbage (DFC)" and "Frontline," both of which take unexpected turns. The electric solo taken by Harrison on the horizon-seeking former is pure joy. ~ Andy Kellman