'This is a disc that arguably should never have been made.’ That’s Red Priest themselves writing in the booklet accompanying their latest assault on decorum, in which they reduce Handel’s masterpiece to a series of dad jokes, gratuitous virtuoso displays and outrageous anachronisms. The worst part is that it’s actually quite brilliant.

Reluctantly taking up cellist Angela East’s desire to assemble an instrumental suite from key parts of Messiah, the rest of the band proceeded to abandon any pretence to propriety by including snippets of swing, Jesus Christ Superstar, Jaws and Monty Python’s Life of Brian. And this being Extreme Baroque, the playing from all concerned, especially from Piers Adams on a variety of recorders from sopranino to bass, is showy in the extreme (try, for example, ‘The Recorder Shall Sound’). To be fair, Adams isn’t just a naughty boy and there are lovely moments such as Handel’s Eternal Source of Light Divine, which takes us from the ridiculous to the sublime. But Suite from The Messiah really is just a good old-fashioned musical bash.

Which makes the ‘serious’ half of the recording to follow even more satisfying. ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’, lavishly ornamented and without a recorder in sight, is glorious, while the two sets of variations contain some of the most extraordinary instrumental playing you’re likely to hear. But this wouldn’t be a Red Priest recording without the joker up the sleeve produced at the end: Zadok the Red Priest, where ‘Zadok the Priest and the Queen of Sheba become unlikely but fervent lovers’. What can you say to that?