Viennese duo Makossa & Megablast have spent the last decade affiliated with that city’s G-Stone Recordings collective, but four years on from their preceding debut album ‘Kunuaka’ this follow-up collection ‘Soy Como Soy’ offers up the first release on the duo’s own Luvlite Recordings label. Makossa & Megablast always represented the more upbeat dancefloor-focused end of G-Stone’s artist roster, and like its predecessor a large share of the 15 tracks collected here centre around tight, precisely sculpted house rhythms and lush percussion textures. The latin influences implicit in the title really start coming to the forefront on tracks such as ‘Wangu’, which sees Tony Allen’s fluid live drumming merging with tumbling percussion and Zimbabwean vocals from OG Spiritual Goddess over a hypnotic backdrop of trailing synth tones, while ‘Bailalo’ ventures far closer to stripped back baile funk, as Cledys Villalon’s auto-tuned Cuban vocals dart against urgently bleeping analogue synths and rattling off-centre house rhythms.
While there’s certainly an extrovert dancefloor pulse at work here though, it’s the frequent deployment of darker, more moody undertones that really brings out some of this album’s most interesting moments. ‘Kinky Ebony’ strips away the guest vocalists in favour of a dark tech-y ride through rattling, Brazilian-tinged percussion breaks, streamlined house kicks and sinister noodling analogue synths that injects a dose of Carl Craig-esque nocturnal atmosphere into proceedings, but in many senses it’s ex-Tower Of Power singer Hubert Tubbs that really steals the show here, adding his rich soul vocals to a shimmering, streamlined backdrop of nightdrive tech-house rhythms and deeply atmospheric phased synths on ‘Coming Home’, easily one of the most slowburning tracks on offer here. Well worth investigation.
Chris Downton
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