Digital Kabar

Since the 1990s, maloya – the quasi-religious, deeply political Creole music of La Réunion that was famously banned by the French administration – has coexisted on the island with a small but fertile rave music scene (with its own ritualistic culture and clandestine history), so it was only a matter of time before they started rubbing off on one another.

Digital Kabar shines a torch on the many resultant offshoots of this marriage, offering the top picks of different tempos and styles from veterans and newcomers alike. This includes, as you might expect, a handful of rather standard deep-house-tunes-with-a-tropical-twist, but overall, the hypnotic, trancey qualities shared by the two musical strands make for a good combination, while the challenges posed by, say, incorporating maloya's ternary rhythms into techno, or using synthesizers to mimic the syncopated shuffle of the kayamb (La Réunion's staple percussion instrument), are enough to ensure innovation.

There are some real gems in here too. Loya's Indian-influenced ‘Malbar Dance’ is one, lifting off from its bed of live drumming and 808 bass into a mind-bending cosmic raga. So is Boogzbrown's ‘Timbila’, a delectable mix of synth and sample bursting with that compulsive bounce that could only come from maloya.