“There’s no point in making the same kind of record that Roy Hargrove, Nicholas Payton or Wallace Roney makes,” says trumpeter Tim Hagans. But electronic rhythm machines, reprogrammed backing tracks, and hip-hop sensibilities? Are we talking gimmicks here? Absolutely not.

Both Hagans and Russell Gunn, faced with the challenge of making their marks as young trumpet phenoms, rise admirably to the challenge. Hagans employs a variety of recorded backdrops for In a Silent Way-esque extended meditations that prove unaccountably thrilling with a deliberate introspection both careful and intense.

Russell Gunn, on the other hand, invites a host of rappers and samples aboard a conception that somehow remains fixed and coherent around his flickering solos and blues-infused arrangements. Neither fails to recognize his sources, with Hagans crediting both the early electronic Miles and producer/saxophonist Bob Belden, while Gunn covers a pair of sample- incorporating, hip-hop-inspired tunes by Woody Shaw and Branford Marsalis (as well as another pair by himself and his saxophonist, Greg Tardy).

In a sense, these two young trumpeters represent opposite faces of the same cutting edge, Hagans’ the darkly interior, Gunn’s the challenging extrovert, while both accomplish the same task, moving the music forward credibly while managing to avoid the well-worked ground of historical reverence and ethnic amplification.

No Standards, Volume 24 here’ or high-rolling production trips to Third World countries, just buffed-up chops, fierce innovation, no-loose-ends production, and, finally, the hard-won triumph of = young, determined talent. On the basis of these two outings, you’d have to revise your projections for the music renewing itself in the hands of a younger generation when the younger generation when the future eventually arrives.

Could be yet another incarnation in the making for jazz in the new millennium.