Covers stars of Feb/March’s NZM, Te Vaka have compiled a faultless selection of tracks with an obvious focus on Pacific culture and character. ‘Ki mua’ is what I would term (dare I say it) ‘Pacific Rock’. It has a very professional sound, is well produced by Malcolm Smith and Opetaia Foa’i with cool and easy grooves with chants that have a real, authentic sense of culture and Polynesian style. There’s no English here, the songs penned by frontman Opetaia Foa’i are all sung in Tokelauan which benefits the overall sound of the album. Title track Ki mua starts off nice and easy, drawing the cultural sounds of the Pacific up from the depths of Tradition and into the realms of it’s future. A song foundation of male harmonies layer well with an equally strong mix of angelic tones from vocalist Sulata Foa’i. The combination of vocals is best displayed on the harmony drenched Pate Pate while Lua Afe should be heard in dance clubs throughout the nation, if not the world. It makes way more sense to me to dance to these songs than all of the boom box techno junk food busting our eardrums today. There’s nothing I can fault about the musicianship on this album, nor the song construction or production. Even the addition of children’s voices on Ke Ke Kitea bring out a serene vibrance of culture and art inspired mainly and uniquely by the past and present lives of a people led by an adventurous and free spirit.
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Other than this album, I only have Olatia and Nukukehe, so I don't really know what Tutuki and self-titled are like, but this one stands out in that one of its backbone instruments is a very crisp acoustic guitar with chorus effect. In "Hea La Koe Iei" and "Kau Tufuga Fai Vaka" the guitar gets pretty funky, and in "Sagalogalo Ake" and "Ke Ke Kitea" the distinctive guitar drives the entire song.

Some unusual pieces on this album include Aue Kapaku, which is a percussion/chanting piece, but the chanting is entirely monotonous - it is seriously all one note - but it grew on me and I love the song now.

Vaka Atua is a 4.5 minute long tragic abstract piece which I thought was terrible at first but it captures so much emotion, especially if you read the story behind the song in the inside leaflet.

I thought it was pretty weird for Te Vaka at first and it had to grow on me, but now I can honestly give the album 5 stars.

It should be noted that unlike at least Nukukehe and Olatia, there are no lyrics translations in the leaflet for this album, but there are quick words about the meanings behind songs, and lyrics translations are freely available anyway on Te Vaka's website.
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