Samba em Kigali

Following 2022's well-streamed Voyage, the Belgian duo of rapper and lyricist Alessandro ‘Le Tagarel’ Vlerick and producer and composer Simon ‘SiKa’ Carlier have released this complementary follow-up. Although the title references Le Tagarel's links to Rwanda's capital and the duo's love of Brazilian music, the end result is closer to Maze, late-night Marvin Gaye or Marcos Valle, when he's at his most nostalgic for golden-age disco and jazz-funk. The duo's mellifluous mid-tempo soul/funk has all the right ingredients. One hears this in the opening ‘África Brasil’ and the ensuing ‘Terra Preta’, the third single: a serene, gently swinging mix of swirling synths and keyboard vibes married to an insistent bass line and Le Tagarel's lazy, seductive vocal. And so it all floats effortlessly along, through to the closing ‘Samba em Kigali’, seemingly the only track with evident Brazilian antecedents. The press blurb talks of ‘a pure ray of aural sunshine to welcome the warm weather’ – and you can't argue with that. There's nothing here, in fact, to dislike; the trouble is, it's all been done before. Many times.