Both an elegy and a celebration of a life, Nada Para O Carnaval brims with the sort of good-time verve and easy musicality that soundtrack the streets of Brazil. And while it might be the product of a chorinho-happy outfit from the Rio barrios, it is, in fact, the much-awaited debut from Almanaque, a long-established UK-based band led by Italian guitarist Luca Boscagin and featuring hard-working trumpeter and Ubuntu-co-founder Quentin Collins, his chops kept gleaming by side hustles with funksters such as Omar and Fred Wesley.

Hotshot Brazilian players on bass, drums and percussion ground tracks such as ‘Milagreiro’, a relaxed but grooving Latin dance wig-out; guest vocals – and some gloriously inventive vocalese – from rising French star Camille Bertault add playfulness and soul, notably on a cover of Milton Nascimento's 1972 hit ‘Lilia’ and ‘Rush Hour Chorinho’, a fast-paced Afro-Brazilian journey on which her voice vies and blends with guitar and horn.

It's an accomplished effort from a tight-knit group - all the tighter, perhaps, for being a quintet and not a dance orchestra - who have spent a decade or so honing their sound at festivals and gigs from London to Ibiza and winning a loyal following in the process. Stop the carnaval? We wouldn't dare.