Cuica
City To City
Ubiquity
The British/Italian duo of Peter Herbert and Simone Serritella take cross-global gene-swapping to an extreme and, in so doing, have created a very intriguing, very exciting album. City To City is a Jules Verne dance adventure, concocting an intoxicating elixir of house, Afro-Brazilian percussion, splashes of jazz, and dashes of nascent Afrotech. Their smoothed-out, international dance stylings are very reminiscent of Truby Trio, Afro Mystik, and the like, and are just as delicious.
The disc starts off with a nice retro-house funky cut, “Why Not Samba,” that is driven by brilliant acoustic, Brazilian percussion. “Cuidado” is a slick Brazil beat house jam laced with spiritual, astral-jazzy vocals that make it a smooth glide to the dance floor. In fact, the entire album has a buttery smoothness to it that is girded by energy-driving Afro-Brazilian/Latino percussion. Herbert and Serritella have a serious knack in seamlessly mixing the acoustic with the percussive, house with jazz, and all things Diaspora into a cohesive whole that blends all these elements almost beyond distinction (check out “Nights Over Vauxhall,” “Trommel Monster,” and “Afrique”). The end result is an ecstatic dance adventure that intrigues, blurs boundaries, makes for good dancing, and even better listening – all with international flair.
Ubiquity Records: http://www.ubiquityrecords.com/
