LED by New York-based Slovenian sax player and composer Jan Kus, the Slavo Rican Assembly are a seven-piece jazz combo which melds hot New York Latin jazz (the band members, are prominent New York-based musicians) with traditional southern Slavic roots music — but with the accent firmly on the rhythms of Puerto Rico.

“The focus of Slavo Rican Assembly is the exploration of the similarities and differences between the music of the Puerto Rican (and wider speaking Caribbean) and South Slavic cultures,” says Kus.

On their new album — Intercosmic (Riverboat Records) — the band play reworked versions of Slavic folk songs including a Slovenian harvesting song, Zrejlo je zito (The Wheat is Ripe), with an Afro-Caribbean bass line and fiery percussion and drum solos.

Vo nase selo (To our Village) features a vocal group fronted by Assembly singer Aleksandra Denda on a song about a man trying to impress a young woman which explodes into a full-on Puerto Rican dance party.

Bomba Jam incorporates Puerto Rican bomba music (the native rhythmic music of Puerto Rico, created in sugar plantations by slaves more than 400 years ago) — and sounds like late 1960s Santana, while bass player Dan Martinez pays tribute to his island homeland with his composition Oda a Maria, which described the island’s fight against the devastation brought to Puerto Rico by the  Hurricane Maria disaster in 2017.

The band’s hypnotic Vamp Song contains the spoken message from the Indian philosopher, speaker and writer Jiddu Krishnamurti and Thunderbadger, is a backbeat driven jazz funk number, inspired in part by the music of the Los Angeles bassist, rapper, singer and songwriter Thundercat which interweaves Balkan rhythms into its hypnotic funk groove.

Bomba, salsa and rumba Slovenian roots and Indian philosophy make for a great international jazz mix.