Andy Sheppard put his leather trousers on for this one; maybe he suspected that cutting a swathe through the ambience of this gig was going to be difficult by sonic means alone. The saxophonist and his long-time trumpet partner Claude Deppa are on a short UK tour, pitching their delicate and devious spontaneous ruminations against the mix of eclectic music, headlong beats, speech and noise produced by the adventurous DJ duo of Max Reinhardt and Rita Ray.

From the jazz-improvisation angle, as soloists they probably just about got a draw out of it - with the brighter attack of Deppa's high-register playing and the more explosively accented manner of his phrasing (Sheppard plays in a cooler, more legato manner) giving him a penetrative edge against the chatter of old newsreel soundtracks, African vocal choirs, microtonal Middle Eastern music and stuttery drum-machine fusillades hurtling out of the hardware.

But the ensemble effect (rather like an all-out free- improv gig) was at times quite startling, particularly when the two horn-players sacrificed complex melody lines for repeated vamps and riff-like phrases that injected timbre and vivid colour into the melee behind them.

By instrument and disposition Deppa was more suited to the situation, often playing in a manner reminiscent of Miles Davis's punchiest funk explorations in the Bitches' Brew and Agharta period. Sheppard was his familiar lyrical self in passages where the groove stayed put for a while and let his melodic imagination unwind. As the set developed both Deppa and Sheppard found a real animation, bouncing clipped, fragmentary phrases back and forth while the DJs unleashed their undertow of charging grooves, four-wheel skidding without warning into stately choral sounds or old documentary commentaries.

This was a fascinating Serious Sampler show (the Serious Productions' operation is presenting a number of its musical visions for 2000 and beyond) and confirms that imaginative jazz players can make original music in almost any context.

But DJs working with jazz improvisers also need to remember to lay out or let the groove roll sometimes, if they are not to turn their partners into the hot-licks players they spent years learning not to be.

• Andy Sheppard, Claude Deppa, Max Reinhardt and Rita Ray are at the Arches, Glasgow on Wednesday, and The Wardrobe, Leeds, on December 22