They Found Asylum in the Sea

The seven-piece UK Afrobeat collective Sea Slugs have self-released three albums in four years since they formed in 2013. The legacy of Fela Kuti is only the jumping-off point for their musical voyaging, which takes in free jazz, Afropop, psych-rock and North African stylings. The angular guitars, squiggly bass lines and synth noodles of the opener ‘Do or Die’ evoke David Byrne and Talking Heads as much as a night at Lagos’ Shrine, while David Cefai's trad-folk vocals on ‘Adorning Her’ sound like a deliciously improbable meeting between Seth Lakeman and Tony Allen, embellished by some wonderful alto sax playing by Beth Hopkins. Unlike many contemporary Afrobeat ensembles, they’re not just a jam band either, but are brimming with songs that have plenty to say about the refugee crisis, corporate corruption, post-colonialism and austerity. The only off-key note comes in the title-track. It's the most overtly Afrobeat-influenced composition and musically it's tremendous; but the imitation of Fela's pidgin lyrics (‘he go run, he go hide’) by an all-white English band from Southampton is an homage too far.