Boohgaloo Zoo – Boohgaloo Zoo

Imagine a reanimated James Brown jerking around artificially in front of a backing band consisting of a Stars in Their Eyes Prince, a sober Sly Stallone and a earthbound George Clinton. The sound that this identikit supergroup your mind’s eye has just conjured up could be ably provided by Boohgaloo Zoo (a truly dire band name too) on their self-titled album.

It’s Euro funk, bloodless soul, albino jazz, temperance disco; all the sweaty, sexy mysterious genres given a conservative makeover and rendered impotent. Samples of standard funk interjections abound (‘testify’, ‘back in the day’, ‘I got to’, exhortations to ‘get up’ and ‘get down’,) and there’s some clever rapping by the sort of MC white people listen to. Producers K’bonus and U-Gene (they’re from the Low Countries) are clearly dab hands in the studio, but everything here is far too neat and polite to truly recreate the spirit of the music it intends to. [Euan Ferguson]