With ‘Havana’, the thirteenth entry in his shape-shifting Agile Experiments project, multi-instrumentalist/producer Dave De Rose channels the heat-hazed, tympanic pulse of Cuba’s capital into a document of joyous collective improvisation, ecstatic groove alchemy and meticulously original choices of post-production. Following 2024’s ‘Loukoumades’ album, forged of Athenian experimental sound-art within a hip-hop slang, De Rose thrusts the project’s output into a new terrain of percussion-led futurism.

As with all Agile Experiments releases, the sound is unrepeatable, born entirely from the constellation of players, their instincts, and the moment. Across ten tracks, ‘Havana’ moves through atmospheres like drifting across a cityscape. Street sounds De Rose captured on walks through the city seep into the mix: the hum of engines, the chorus of park life, the soft crumble of architecture. The record feels lived-in, porous, breathing. ‘Havana’ traces a deeper set of themes: oneness, community, local pride, tradition meeting futurism, and the soft-hard duality of real emotional life. De Rose wants listeners to feel “softness and kindness, alongside the true tension and relief of life’s roaring thunder”.

Influenced by a personal cosmology that connects Sun Ra to Ugandan ritual recordings, Steve Reich to Angolan funk, Meshell Ndegeocello to Primus; De Rose keeps one foot in improvisational lineage and the other in pure sonic curiosity. His upbringing in Rome, surrounded by his father’s extensive jazz vinyl library and instruments, meets a lifetime of travel through culturally rich musical landscapes. ‘Havana’ is another node in that ongoing map; built from place, from people, from risk, and from the courage to let the unexpected lead. It’s a record as alive as the city that birthed it: radiant, rhythmic, and resolutely expressive.