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Herald Rating: * * * *
Label: Border
Verdict: Auckland 13-piece come on like Kool and the Gang and celebrate
New Zealand funk-inspired bands can often come across as happy clappy and twee. Then there's BSM, previously known as Batucada Sound Machine, whose debut album is solid and beefy with moments of head-nodding poise, especially on part one of album centrepiece, Hechicera.
Considering how many members in the band - 13, including rampant percussion and fiery brass sections - they'd want to sound big and beefy but size has nothing to do with it. BSM's secret is the way they seamlessly mix funk, hip-hop, dub, and rock with Latin, Afro-beat and other world music flavours.
Take stand-out Cumbia del Cambio, a half-English, half-Spanish track that starts with a skanking dub groove, gives way to a more frenetic Latin rhythm that's backed up by clattering percussion, then it warps into a sonic, banging dancefloor anthem until it ends with a scream and celebratory blasts of horns. There's also stunning English/Portugese serenade I See You, the crazed and hallucinatory Vai Chegar, and the psychedelic samba of Batucada Ae.
Rhythm & Rhyme, produced by Neil Sparkes from Transglobal Underground, is all over the place but in the best possible way.
