Soley

Soley is the first outing of Noukilla, a six-piece group of Mauritian session musicians living in Shanghai who first got together ten years ago to play the old tunes from their homeland, and have been bringing the hyper-jubilant island vibes of sega – as well as its electrified and slightly more tempered reggae-hybrid seggae – to the city's bars and music festivals ever since.

The album opens strongly with the excellent ‘Linite Enn Nasion’, which fits moments of cool jazz, a dub breakdown and a bare-bones 6/8 percussion section around an anthemic chorus that you'll wish you knew the words to, all with seriously impressive musical cohesion. Much of the album though, with its retro keyboard synths, soft-rock guitar riffs and suave sax solos, feels like it has come through a time-warp from a less exciting era and location than either past Mauritius or present Shanghai (the intros to at least four tracks could be comfortably played over the opening credits for an 80s US cop show), and there's a whiff of the hotel lobby to the squeaky clean production. It's a shame – judging by videos of their live shows, Noukilla can clearly get an audience moving, but their transition into the recording booth here doesn't quite hit the spot.