Sola Rosa: Moves On

(Herald rating: * * *)

As he's headed to his third album in four years, Sola Rosa - Auckland producer-musician Andrew Spraggon - has gained in confidence and support crew.

This one comes with a cast of tens - with Spraggon's previous sample-heavy laptop-tweaking approach giving away to an extensive list of players and guest voices.

Sola Rosa's efforts at fully-fledged songs - the lounge R&B Redeemer sung by Deva Mahal, the reggae-inflections of Badman with Spikey Teen and Breezes Blowing with Paul St Hillaire - do impress. Elsewhere, though, Moves On feels like an album operating in a comfort zone largely defined by its two predecessors and content to percolate gently away as background music of slightly exotic textures.

Again, it comes with jazzy detailing, lounge-friendly rhythms shifting from Latin cha-chas to loping dub and back over tempos that are positively soothing.

It does start out sounding a little dangerous on The C'Mon, with its suggestion of a Blaxploitation film theme that never was. And the perky What If? neatly mixes up electrofunk with distant echoes of the jazz age underneath Nathan Haines' flute and saxophone and Manuel Bundy's turntables.

But a little too much of Move On drifts on past, always groovy but barely gripping.

Label: FMR