(Way Up Recordings/Inertia)

Riding high on the wave of stellar acts crashing across the Tasman, Sola Rosa join Fat Freddie’s Drop, The Black Seeds and Salmonella Dub as New Zealand’s finest purveyors of tight, modern dub music with a distinct live flavor. This peerless collective of artists have been responsible for reigniting interest in the genre by lacing their laconic sound with hip hop and electronica, as well as touring relentlessly as big, sprawling bands. Fat Freddie’s Drop even had the honor of being asked to play at Sonar 2006, and their lead singers honey suckle vocals wooed dance floors everywhere. Comparatively Sola Rosa are not as languid or laidback as Fat Freddie’s Drop, and certainly not as shrouded in THC as Salmonella Dub, as they take a few more risks and stretch their fingers out to tickle a few more genres than their NZ brethren. This makes Moves On a really good album.

After the menacing trumpet funk of opener The C’mon, all soul brother samples and time bomb bongo lines, Sola Rosa take you back…… way back. What If harks back to Buckshot Le Fonque style jazz, evoking early 90’s head nodding in Bed-Sty Brooklyn and the sultry Redeemer has vocalist Deva Mahal’s aural molasses dripping slowly and surely over tight Hammond organ grooves recalling early Brand New Heavies.

More on the edge is the hypnotic and brilliant Deadman Walking which reinterprets the dub sound: ethereal arabesque strings stir above thick, murky bass lines and ghostly effects, trapping you down in a haze of hashish. The Latin tinged Way Up truly knocks you back with its woozy Cuban piano, Bacardi soaked swagger and sexy horn thrusts. It amply displays the talent of a group blowing raspberries at the ‘NZ sound’ and carving out their own musical cavern to dwell in.

There are, inevitably, the run of the mill dub cuts with obligatory Rasta vocals, and how well you digest them will depend on the depth of your dub/reggae palette. They fit in well amongst Sola Rosa’s audacious foray’s into different styles, particularly the spooked out grooves of Badman where the sweet Kingston style vocals of Spiky Tee are pushed down dark corridors of dub. Not so effective is Breezes Blowing, a meandering reggae number that has Paul St Hilare sounding like an understudy to Horace Andy with the band seemingly just staring at the walls and just going through the motions.

The two closing tracks are tight and focused workouts that weave all their influences clinically. Dangerous Dub is a rolling jam reminiscent of later Sly and Robbie at their best but it’s the epic final waltz and title track that is the albums crown jewel. Sola Rosa dim down the lights and march gloriously into dawn with a late night club number you just don’t want to see end. Island sweet and full of funk but also effortlessly cool and ambitious in the right places, Moves On is a solid album.