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An exuberant combination of colonial military brass music and West African juju and assiko rhythms, Gangbé Brass Band manage to sound a whole lot better than their description looks on paper. Marrying joyously bright horns and syncopated rhythms - held down by a raunchy tuba bass beat - the spirit of this music is geared for dancing not marching.

It’s a sound that could tend to sameness, yet sufficient influences abound to keep it all bubbling along, from vibrant trumpet lines that are reminiscent of the ’70s Afro-Caribbean disco sound of Osibisa, through dramatic film-score flourishes (the excellent ‘Sofada’) to improvised syncopated beats that underlie soaring European folk melodies.
And although Assiko is largely instrumental, there’s plenty of rousing call-and-response vocalising to infuse it all with a social, almost spiritual, feel.

It all comes together most agreeably on ‘Un étè à Vodelée’, which possesses a touch of Caribbean sunshine, some hard and heavy West African percussion, storming horn bridges and the merest hint of a mambo beat, all topped off with French (or French Antilles)-style accordion wheezing in and out of the gaps.
Upbeat, melodic, vibrantly rhythmic stuff.