Coti Coti

How much sax can you take? Anyone working in the vicinity of a tireless one-hit busker or being driven by a taxi driver with a love for Kenny G might say, ‘er, not much.’ Mexico's Nahui Cuarteto, playing soprano, tenor, alto and baritone instruments, play covers of well-known Latin American/Cuban standards by the likes of Astor Piazzolla (six songs on here), Dámaso Pérez Prado and Alvaro Carrillo Alarcón. What saxes, even virtuoso ones like these, tend to do to anything they touch is either klezmerise them or turn them into subway station gush. Thus, the fast sections of ‘Adiós Nonino’ come out as frantic efforts to squeeze the notes in; you imagine the blowers almost fainting with the effort.

The slow bits, by contrast, become whining rather than plangent, and are somehow thin and monotone, even when two saxes blow in harmony. Other tracks (eg Alarcón's ‘Malagueña y Pinotepa Nacional’) come over a bit too martial – something to do with the way sax notes never linger, but goosestep on in uniform. Pérez Prado's ‘Qué Rico Mambo’ comes over as fairly ‘rico’, but you can still hear the missing percussion and piano. The whole enterprise reminds me of Finnish mouth-organists Sväng – a lot of fun, but a bit of a gimmick.