Review: Da Lata, Fabiola (Agogo Records)

If this world-fusion outfit had opened their long-awaited new album with the ghastly third-rate funk-rock track that closes it, your reviewer would have instantly pressed the eject button and you wouldn’t be reading this.

Fortunately, everything else here is either acceptable (in a mid-period Morcheeba way) or engaging (in a Talking Heads “Burning Down the House” way). But then Da Lata have been carefully constructing Afrobeat-meets-samba grooves folding in a bit of hip-hop, psychedelia and electronica as they go for 20 years now, so they should know what they’re doing.

Not groundbreaking but pleasant enough, and certainly benefiting from a shift from rigid programmed grooves to supple live playing.