Steph Richards has already made quite a name for herself in the worlds of avant garde music and creative jazz. She has recorded for Relative Pitch and Northern Spy, worked with Laurie Anderson, Anthony Braxton and Ravi Coltrane and studied with Wadada Leo Smith. As co-producer of the FONT Music Festival, Richards worked for years alongside fellow trumpeter Dave Douglas. Her records have been praised for displaying her evident virtuosity and inventiveness, the New York Times calling Richards boldly inventive. NPRs Nate Chinen says Richards is ingenious and Downbeat insisted that she is the latest figure of note in jazz while All About Jazz cuts to the chase, saying simply, that Richards kicks ass. Its an impressive history and litany of praise for a young trumpeter, but with her latest full-length for Northern Spy, Power Vibe, Richards pushes even further, marrying avant garde and cinematic moods with a kind of infectious and patently pleasing tunefulness that is certain to expand her dedicated audience even further. The addition of sensory electronics subtle but compelling textures and tactile rhythms which are physically triggered by drum-mounted sensors compels fascination here, interweaving a kind of aural hyper-lucidity throughout the record. Though boldly original, this music strides surefootedly alongside the work of contemporaries like Nicole Mitchell and Rob Mazurek and the late jaimie branch.