Lunar Tredd

Fimber Bravo may not be Trinidad's best-known steel pan player. His skill comes instead through experimentation, a creative approach that makes for a perfect collaboration with Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor. The resulting album, Lunar Tredd, is a brilliant piece of easy-on-the-ear electronica with a distinctly human pulse. Versatility comes naturally to an instrument that evolved from an impulse to bash anything that came to hand — a pot, a pan, an oil drum — when, as happened in the slave trade history of Trinidad, the human right to create music was removed. And as Bravo proves, a few subtle hits can distort a pan into just about anything. 

Most importantly, Lunar Tredd is a lesson for anyone who thinks of the steel pan as a metaphor for 'happy vibes' and little else. Glimpses of its complex African roots can be heard in the intuitive accompaniment with kora master Kadialy Kouyate on the richly layered track 'Call My Name'. On the instrumental, intriguingly named 'Santana's Daughter', the steel pan is theremin-esque in the way it creates an eerily vocal sound with more pitch-perfection than an opera singer. If you're looking for something totally unlike anything you've heard before, try this.