Charlie Watts/Jim Keltner Project

Charlie Watts once famously said of the first 25 years with the Rolling Stones that it was five years of music and twenty years of waiting around. What a pity that those twenty idle years were not used for such splendid projects as this rewarding adventure with that equally decent skinsman Jim Keltner.

Those of you expecting that Watts’ fascination with the Charlie Parker era would have steered this album towards worthy but staid old fuddy-duddy fifties jazz will have both ears pinned back repeatedly on the nine tracks herein, all quirkily named in honour of various drumming legends like ‘Art Blakey’, ‘Max Roach’ and ‘Airto (Moreira)’, even if stylistically the music in the grooves often appears to have little in common with the styles of the dedicatees.

This is an album that overlays Watts’ trademark solid r’n’b beat and Keltner’s session suss with the kitchen sink, blasts of techno, raw jungle rhythms, electronica, sequenced sounds, experimental slabs, slivers of world music, rock, jazz and ambient atmospherics in an ear-tingling melange of sounds that challenge, provoke, and at times frighten the shite out of you.

‘Kenny Clarke’ is full of Eastern promise as it sinuously slithers up your spine. The lengthy ‘Tony Williams’ is beguilingly hypnotic and as sonically contemporary as the Chemical Brothers. ‘Roy Haynes’ has that characteristic Stones percussiveness.

‘Billy Higgins’ hides an undercurrent of unsettling menace with its

incongruous mix of industrial and Indian noises. Not surprisingly, ‘Airto’ has a slinky salsa swing to it, and ‘The Elvin Suite’ (named for Elvin Jones) has some delicious African vocals and tasty vibes.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards add some piano here and there, but there was a justifiable ban on guitars and saxophones. As a result, this is without question the most adventurous and stimulating solo Stones album ever.

Don’t file it under jazz, and don’t play it alone in the dark.