Barbacana is an Anglo-French quartet that brings together some of the keenest young musical intelligences from either side of the channel: British firebrands James Alsopp and Kit Downes and rising French artists Sylvain Darrifourcq and Adrien Dennefeld. Since 2009, they've been stunning live audiences with their barbed, angular riffs and hive-mind extemporisations. The self-titled debut album, Barbacana, is a bristling summation of all their group discoveries to date, hinting at both the long history of avant-garde jazz shared by artistic communities in Paris and London, and the love French audiences and musicians have long held for classic British Prog and jazz-rock groups such as Soft Machine, Matching Mole and Hatfield and the North.