The second album from Spanish collective Planeta Imaginario is an engaging, breezy truck through post-Weather Report fusion, as a fusillade of winds mix and match with classic 70s-sounding Fender Rhodes and exotic mosaics of percussion. Planeta Imaginario also manage to shirk the worst excesses of third stream and fascination with Westernized "indigenous" musics that often sent Zawinul & Co. veering off-course. And even though he's more than just a mere Joe, Capel's got the chops to lead his band mates through some decidedly thorny brass-ic arrangements to yield a most satisfying sophomore effort.

"Collective Action" never palls during its quixotic ten minutes, evoking the ghosts of Nucleus and Passport as much as the aforementioned Zawinul crew, as great rippling waves of sax, trombone, trumpet and flute entwine amongst the complex latticework of drums and myriad percussives. "The Garden of Happy Cows" provides total recall to other simpatico outfits — later Soft Machine as much as Bill Bruford's Earthworks — before settling into a pan-ethnic groove of Rhodes and cymbal/stick acrobatics, suggesting walks in the Madridian noonday sun as dancers emerge from the shadows of shopkeeper's kiosks. "Sidewalk Licker" likens itself to an urban romp where passersby strum all ten fingers on the Fender, a sumptuous sonic gala rich in trombone afterglow and beckoning flutes; halfway through, the fiesta commences, the rhythm short-circuits, reignites, and the natives are dancing briskly under moonlit curtains.

If ever there existed a modern, big-band alternative to the usual laissez-faire narratives of what passes today for "jazz" it's Planeta Imaginario. Fusion isn't fizzing — it's simply been imported from Spain.