One of the most fascinating things about South Africa’s Amapiano is that – although the country’s deepest passion is for the most soulful and organic of American house music – it also lifts will-nilly from more globalised and commercialised dance forms too. That’s most audible in its instrumental forms, like this album from young talents Kgothatso Tshabalala and Zakhele Mhlanga where you can hear the most blissfully synthetic elements of progressive house and trance woven into the groovier elements. There’s also a good helping of the high drama of amapiano’s even more synthetic and darker first cousin, gqom, and the combination of old-fashioned funkiness, gothic electronic scale, and deep vernacular rhythms mean it packs a powerful and complex emotional punch as well as being devastatingly functional in moving bodies.

Amapiano music follows a pretty simple recipe: bright synths, looped log-drums, jazzy keys — the “piano” in amapiano. Yet, in the hands of different producers, these elements can build vastly different atmospheres, from sunlit, blissed-out grooves to darker, hypnotic tracks that go deep. On Teenage Dreams Kgothatso Tshabalala and Zakhele Mhlanga, the two young producers who make up Native Soul, mostly focus on the latter style, keeping vocals to a minimum in favor of relentless percussive patterns and ominous synths. But it’s not all doom and gloom: the jazzy keys and tension-building chord progression create an uplifting, carefree energy that keeps you moving.