When accidents happen, they are normally over in seconds, sometimes minutes; this one has been going on for 20 years. It is two decades since the members of Emile Parisien’s quartet played a jam session together. At the end, they looked at each other in disbelief. They had not only been hit by a collective musical thunderbolt, they also knew they had just brought… well… something into being. The common ground between them was jazz, but each had all kinds of seeds to sow in it, from classical music and contemporary sounds to rock, electronica and chanson. Saxofonist Emile Parisien, pianist Julien Touéry, bassist Ivan Gélugne and drummer Julien Loutelier rip up labels, break down barriers, upset codes, and yet they know exactly where they are headed. There is a shared obsession with narrative: “The central axis of the quartet has always been storytelling,” Parisien emphasizes. ‘Let Them Cook’ is like a breath of fresh air, with a band sound now firmly and unmistakably of 2024 rather than 2004. There was a particular turning point: at a concert in Sweden, near the end of their ‘Double Screening’ album tour, they had taken a chance and tried out a move from an entirely acoustic sound to incorporating some electronics.