I was originally going to write about Mitoka Samba's eponymous album that I downloaded from the US Amazon site. Except now, as a France-based referrer, I can't point you to it.  :-(  However, I found a compliation album which features Mitoka Samba and a few other artists as well - doing some interesting recomposing of songs in percussion arrangements.  Enjoy with my original notes on Mitoka Samba below....

I found this album on Amazon one day while looking for samba de roda songs I could practice with.  While I was tempted to only download the samba de roda song, I sampled the rest and discovered an interesting mix.

I was not really that impressed listening the first few times.  There were some attempted horns that seem to throw things off; and it sounded like they used a conventional samba reggae setup (with a lot of timbau) for a wider variety of Brazilian rhythms that did not use that kind of setup.

But after listening to the whole album competely several times now, I've become more and more of a fan.  They actually cover a lot of ground - its not just a bunch of samba (or samba-reggae) percussion.  Their sound does change quite a bit, but you can't tell at first because most of the album is just percussion and singing (which is why the horns stand out so much).  And I appreciate the work they've put into re-composing a number of covers, notably Se Manda, De Noite Na Cama and Magalehna.  (For all I know, the entire album could be covers, which would not surprise me).