Appaloosa - Savana

Appaloosa peddle some rather tasty instrumental funk-rock. And, just to clarify, that’s genuine, butt-shaking beauties, rather than the kind of white-guy Shaft cliché-mongering associated with certain high temperature chilli peppers.

With two bass players in their line up, the Tuscan quartet produce plenty of fuzzed-out low-end twangs to delve into, with opener Minimo sounding like the score to some post-punk, sci-fi B-movie in which Peter Hook battles it out with an evil clone. Chinatown adds some tribal drum rumbles to the mix, whilst Tg is a beauty of odd time signature – angular and danceable.

Closing track Glu could so easily be a song that fermented in Mark E. Smith’s brain; a highly entropic album, Savana begins with jolly dance-rock synths and ends with wheezing feedback, but in between there’s a glut of undeniable grooves. [Joe Barton]