Así de Sampling!

It's almost the stuff of fiction: looking for ways to provide music for ill-equipped house parties, six instrumentalists from Havana's Instituto Superior de Arte decide to form an a capella group to replicate the sound of a full salsa band. Listen to the charming version of the Cuban classic ‘El Carretero’ or the dazzling ‘Tiene Que Haber De To’ and you’d have to admit that they have succeeded magnificently.

Unfortunately, the fifth track is a take on The Police's ‘Every Breath You Take’. It's extraordinary, but one rather wishes that they hadn’t bothered. Similarly, versions of ‘Blowing in the Wind’, the old Sammy Cahn and Jules Styne chestnut ‘Five Minutes More’, and the Chinese smash ‘Tian Mi Mi’, conspire to create an uncomfortable sense of the Swingle Singers in Havana. The group have honed their art over many years and, among other highlights, they participated in the 1996 Montreux Jazz Festival to celebrate Quincy Jones’ 50 years in music. They’re a class act. It seems churlish and perhaps inappropriate to suggest it, but this periodically dazzling album could have earned an extra star if they had stuck to Cuban repertoire.