Swedish collective offer a taste of retro-chic

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This clever eight-piece Swedish collective shares a stage with the BBC Big Band at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival tonight, and if their unaugmented performance is any guide, they will be a sensation. Retro-chic is the name of Koop's game, a nimble exercise in timetravel. Oscar Simonsson and Magnus Zingmark's writing does for the Forties what bands like the Temperance Seven once did for the Twenties. It's a jazz version of Life on Mars.

The songs may be new - two appear on current TV ads for Comfort (I See a Different You) and Special K (Summer Sun) - but their delivery goes back to an age of trilling accordions, watery vibraphones, singers in satin dresses and bandsmen who slip into the wings during drum solos. What lifted Koop above mere nostalgia last night, though, was their computer-sampled brass, their ace trombonist, Karl Frid, and a storming rhythm section which gave numbers like Koop Island Blues, Forces Sweetheart and The Moonbounce a white-knuckle ride. The elegance of yesteryear had met the disco muscle of today.