Blue Moka: Enjoy!

Enjoy your jazz with a jazz-funk groove and perhaps looking for something a little different? Then Blue Moka may have just the thing with their second album and first international release, Enjoy!. This hard-working Italian quartet formed in 2009 blends a variety of influences, both traditional and modern on this album. There's contemporary jazz, a good helping of funk, some rock and a pinch of electronica. Their instrument mix is interesting too, utilizing sax, Hammond, keyboards, electronics, guitar and drums.

The funky album opener "Enjoy Enjoy" is written by guitarist Michele Bianchi and immediately shows its jazz-fusion and pop sensibilities. If you're of a certain vintage you may find yourself thinking of the Average White Band. Another Bianchi composition, "What Happened," follows with a solid jazz-funk groove leading to an extensive guitar break. One of the album highlights is "Fill the Void" written by drummer Michele Morari. This offers a different soundscape with guitar and Emiliano Vernizzi's sax combining before a Hammond break and finally, the guitar and sax are back to conclude. All underpinned by excellent drumming from Morari.

All members of the quartet contribute compositions. There are two covers, the first is from the left field, Massive Attack's "Teardrop" (perhaps recognisable to U.S. readers as the opening theme for the television show House). Here the sax replaces Elizabeth Fraser's voice before the guitar, keyboards and electronics combine to produce an eerie jazz-fusion soundscape. The other cover is a standard, George Gershwin's "A Foggy Day." This is the most straight-ahead, tradition-grounded track here with Alberto Gurrisi 's Hammond to the fore. It's a real earworm as well.

The compositional baton is then passed to Bianchi and Gurrisi. The Hammond player is on great form here for the funky "Lotus Night." The album closes with Vernizzi's "TOUWW," a great slice of 1970s style jazz-rock.

The band are clearly having fun and have used their broad scope of influences to produce a varied set of uplifting, up-tempo, jazz-funk grooves. An album full of character and personality that offers, as the album title infers, much to enjoy