Brassouls: Not Your Ordinary Municipal Brass Band

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * * * )

Well, that's truth in advertising — this Auckland outfit certainly isn't ordinary. Not many brass bands take on the Swingers' Counting the Beat or invite in Rick Bryant for a chest-swelling original Lies. Elsewhere on this thoroughly enjoyable, very funky debut the Brassouls wobble their woozy way through reggae and soul-funk, head down to New Orleans to party large on Professor Longhair's Big Chief, call on venerable jazz saxophonist Jim Langabeer, and have didgeridoo as a featured instrument. Steered by composer/ arranger and trumpeter Kingsley Melhuish (who was inspired by Lester Bowie's equally heretical Brass Fantasy band), the Brassouls are unique in this country and the better for it. They conform to no fixed notion of what a brass band should be (other than maybe have a good time and ensure you do too), and whether it be the oddly Pasifika sound in places or the blaxploitation funk horns this is — aside from the strained humour of Good Woman — never less than highly entertaining. It's also very good.

Label: Pacific Echoes