*** FATAL MAMBO

(Tinder)

The eight members of Fatal Mambo, a band from Montpellier in France's Occitan South, call their salsa-based dance sauce "salsaioli" -- salsa, yes, but blended with aioli, the garlic-and-olive-oil mayonnaise featured on Mediterranean fish menus from Barcelona to Bordighera. The aioli part of their music is to sing in French. In their music, however they cling much more closely to the delicate triplets and piano-and-horn arrangements of traditional salsa than the Gipsy Kings, say, do to the formats of Gypsy rumba. That they need not do so is proved by the Parisian love-comedy "Tu le sais" (with a surprise Arabic tarab beat break!) and by "Salsaioli" itself, a mix of rock guitar, triplet beats, and hard-knock bass lines that plays all the mischief it can with salsa tradition. In Mediterranean music, the more culture clash and mischief there is, the better.

-- Michael Freedberg