(Blue Note/EMI)
Herald rating: ***
Review: Graham Reid
Opening with the terrific Rose Rouge which sounds like it uses a sped-up sample from Dave Brubeck's Take Five (but doesn't), this outing by the French, jazz-modernist and mix master, Ludovic Navarre (aka St Germain) brings together tub-thumping dub, Latin grooves, a swinging jazz group and house music into an appealing, if sometimes uneven mix.
That opener - with Marlena Shaw's hypnotically repeated sample "I want you to get together" behind Edouard Labor's incendiary sax - raises the stakes so high it almost sets you up for some disappointments.
The dub-framed Montego Bay Spleen, which samples jazz-reggae guitarist Ernest Ranglin, forces a slightly uncomfortable marriage and So Flute will take longtime jazz listeners back to the jazz-rock days of Focus (maybe not such a good idea).
But elsewhere there is an exciting cross-genre blurring of jazz (keyboardist Alexandre Destrez is touched by the hand of Hammond organ funk) and hip-hop philosophies into a melange best sampled in clubs or when the pulses are pounding on the home-front.
If you do nothing else this week, though, make a point of hearing that addictive opener. T'riffic.
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