Gahu: Hot Planet

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * * * )

Don't know about you, but my alarms go off when confronted with music describing itself as jazz/world music. It just seems it's providing itself with a two-way safety net.

You don't think we're jazz? Then we're world.

But it doesn't sound like world.

Ah, that's because it's jazz.

Hmmm.

And this debut album from "New Zealand's leading jazz/world music ensemble" - sorry, never previously heard of you - comes in a cover so unpromising you simply wish whichever friend of the family did it a successful career in airbrushing the sides of panel vans, and then move away quickly.

But wisdom says to put aside such preconceptions of awfulness and slap the thing in the player. And in there this big Auckland ensemble makes excellent sense.

Gahu, which includes longtime musicians Lance McNicoll and Cadzow Cossar on guitars, percussionist Bud Hooper, bassist Jane McAllister, Ghanaian percussionist Richard Boatang and guests like Michelle Scullion (flutes), rock the house with bass-heavy grooves, some occasional over-the-top, Santana-like guitar pyrotechnics, and African rhythms and percussion.

This is improv-rock for Womad listeners who would be just as happy at a Cream or Manu Dibango concert. It rocks out - the opener is a constantly morphing, 10-minute piece with a percussion breakdown - and some tracks stretch to eight and 11 minutes. Others clock in around five. There are wah-wah pedals present.

So Gahu lean into tunes which owe much to Fela Anikulapo Kuti's groove-based approach and are lacquered with guitars and Ben McNicolls' saxophones. (The steady rolling Sweet Potato hops off into guitar-strangling prog-rock before coming back to North Africa).

There's a lengthy percussion groove laid down on the traditional Ghanaian tunes Like Water Like Tokwe and Kpanlogo, and Free Gift Tomorrow dumps the funk over a bassline that Tim Finn might have used for Dirty Creature before the guitars take it into juju.

Back in the 80s Jim Langabeer's Superbrew group successfully fused Africa and Aotearoa from a jazz perspective, but Gahu come from the Afrobeat angle with equally good results.

The infectious Hot Planet gets its release party tomorrow night at the Kings Arms, and on the basis of what's here that should be something worth catching.

Get into the groove.

(Dougal/Southbound)