III

Brazilian music has always been at least half African, and the Brazilian Afrobeat band Bixiga 70 – along with many of their contemporaries – continue to re-examine Brazil's musical relationship to Africa. III isn’t the most imaginative title for a third album but then this bunch are more about music than words. Militantly instrumental, their massed ranks of brass and percussion throw up a pulverising wall of heavily Afrocentric sound, graffitied with a little electro and underpinned with subtle Latin and Afro-Portuguese flavours, many of them insinuated by Cris Scabello's sinuous, fathom-deep guitar lines.

The magisterial odyssey of ‘Lembe’ and floppy, fife-and-drum stomp of ‘Mil Vidas’ are two of the most original experiments here. Not quite as groundbreaking as some claim, but Bixiga 70 are an important band and III is a great album nonetheless.