Album Review: Tahuna Breaks Live 10

It’s hard to believe that Tahuna Breaks is celebrating 10 years making music together, although they do seem to have always been around, and I guess if anyone’s going to be keeping a record of how long they’ve been making their brand of funkified reggae, it’d be them.

To celebrate the occasion they’ve release Tahuna Breaks Live 10 – 10 tracks spanning their career, recorded live last year at a one-off concert to celebrate the milestone (so I guess the album should actually be called 10 + 6 months). And it’s a doozy of a live album too.

It opens with a bang, or at least the brassy brashness of Casually Acquainted, before moving to the more traditionally reggae sounding I’m Not Worthy, and onwards through the best of their back catalogue in a well recorded album, that actually sounds exactly like a Tahuna Breaks gig should do.

There’s a good diversity amongst the tracks, moving through big dancey disco numbers (Moves, Reflections), to slower pseudo-ballads (the almost Phil Collins-esque Stars and bass heavy Fearless), which just shows how far their influences have spanned, and their sound developed over the past decade.

Having seen them live a couple of times I think the album does a great job of capturing their on stage energy and vitality, without compromising on quality. It’s a great live release, and a fine way to celebrate a decades music – the band should be proud of what they’ve achieved.