Tropikadelic

Ireke (meaning ‘Sugar Cane’ in Yoruba) are a French duo with musical bona fides and a range of friends to enlist as guests. Sharing a love of Afro-Caribbean rhythms and heroes like Fela Kuti and King Tubby, multi-instrumentalists and arrangers, Damien Tesson and Julien Gervaix, set out to make their first album a ‘call to dance and party.’ Like a supermarket mousse au chocolat, their creation is undeniably sweet and tempting, but full of E numbers. After the initial sugary taste of ‘Femme Qui Danse’ and ‘Love Is Jokin’, for example, you suspect that a lot of air has been whipped into the mix.

The opening ‘Petit à Petit’ and ‘Oh Ma Chérie (Petit à Petit Part 2)’, both sung sweetly by Agnès Hélène, are more convincing but equally fluffy. ‘Man Bo Diak’, however, with a nice vocal by the Franco-Laotian reggae artist Amatah Keo, has a more substantial, dub-infused, house vibe, while the added Afrobeat-style horns beef up the ringing guitars on ‘Métissage’ and its instrumental equivalent, ‘T’es Haut’. ‘Electro Highlife’, the longest track at around five minutes, is exactly that. It's not half bad and the better tracks are really rather good. It's just that it all feels ultimately a little processed.