Album box-set: Gotan Project, Gotan Object (Ya Basta)

Easily the season's most lavishly-presented box set, Gotan Object packages together a double live album, a DVD of the acclaimed electro-tango outfit's stage visuals, a 152-page photo album, a 7in single of two tracks in more traditional orchestral tango form, and a poster cut into 7in panels. The live album consists of two shows, the first recorded in London in 2003 on the tour promoting their debut album La Revancha Del Tango, the second four years later in Switzerland while promoting their third album Lunático. The major difference between them is that the breakbeats and grooves of the 2007 show are more sophisticated than the earlier show's. The earlier concert does, however, include Gotan Project's intriguing adaptation of Frank Zappa's "Chunga's Revenge". Ironically, while the core trio of Philippe Cohen Solal, Eduardo Makaroff and Christoph H Müller occupy themselves with guitar, synths and sundry samplers and turntables, the group's sound is more determined by the supporting cast of strings, piano and bandoneon, which is employed in a manner reminiscent of the way Augustus Pablo used melodica: there's the same breathy quality, the same sense of floating and pushing simultaneously, in these tango dubs as in Pablo's reggae dubs.

Pick of the Album: 'Vuelvo al Sur', 'Tríptico', 'Last Tango in Paris', 'Lunático'

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