Since Ray Russell has spent plenty of the past three decades quietly composing award-winning TV soundtracks and shaping his expressive guitar sound to the whims of stars (Dionne Warwick, Art Garfunkel, Van Morrison and many others), it's perhaps not surprising he lets his hair down when he is the main attraction. Playing two rare solo gigs in the shoebox-sized basement of the Pizza Express Jazz Club, Russell brought a rhythm section powerful enough to have Olympic stadium audiences asking for earplugs. But eventually the music calmed down enough for this unusual artist's identity – a fusion of raw R&B, Coltrane-era free jazz and seductive lyricism – to infiltrate the room.

Russell was joined by regulars – bass-guitar star Mo Foster and drummer Gary Husband – plus guest keyboardist Jim Watson and trumpeter Rupert Cobb. The latter's tightly muted phrasing accompanied the first spacious passages. This followed a turmoil of country-lilting funk, interspersed with wailing guitar improv, driven by Husband's lashing backbeat. Foster's elegant bass walk then underpinned an impressionistic organ passage, before a taut guitar hook led steadily to another blaze of high-register aerobatics.

Russell's remarkable tonal palette came into its own in a more tranquil sequence, with tremulous bottleneck effects blending delicately with the trumpet. Then a more jangly, dulcimer-like guitar sound floated on Husband's subtle cymbal-playing and judicious fills in a fine ballad. Here, Russell's mix of haunting long tones and impulsive turns occasionally recalled the work of that enigmatic guitar master Roy Buchanan.

An emphatic Foster bassline then propelled the next hard-rocking sprint, but now the band was loose, and Watson's eerily whooping keyboard parts and Cobb's Bitches Brew trumpet howls conveyed a much less implacable feel. A little more conversation, a little less action, wouldn't have hurt – but there were plenty of musical surprises for Russell to view this outfit as more than just an occasional break from the desk.