Star rating **** Jacob Fred doesn't appear with the band that bears his name. Or, rather, he does. A moniker, indeed, a handle that goes back to the days of CB radio, Jacob Fred is what pianist Brian Haas called himself at high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

If it sounds like the sort of name that accompanies the words "music by " on animated film credits, that's not inappropriate since Haas, bass guitarist Reed Mathis and drummer Josh Raymer seem to be responding to a movie that only they can see and that they're seeing for the first time. As instant orchestration goes, it's a fascinating process involving gobsmacking levels of skill and energy and apparent telepathy, but also an unashamedly melodic content that doesn't necessarily follow with spontaneous music-making.

At times the music sounds vaguely familiar - and the trio has explored music by Charles Mingus, Neil Young, Brian Wilson and Dave Brubeck in the past. But just as a title from, say, Burt Bacharach or the Beatles suggests itself, the ghostly apparition is whisked away into something closer to a manic salsa, a samba with a limp, a Chopinesque flurry or hell-for-leather grooving with Mathis's bass howling like a hungry coyote and Haas finding more notes - and logical ones at that - than really should be possible.

Haas's integration of a melodica into a repertoire that did definitely, if briefly, include Jimi Hendrix's Third Stone from The Sun adds further intrigue, romance and gospel-soul elements. And, like the best gospel and soul music, it's invigorating stuff, as well as exultant and reflective, for which Jazz Odyssey offers but an understatement. Let's hope Fred calls again, soon.