Album Review: Gonora Sounds – Hard Times Never Kill: Jump, jive, bounce and bite, direct from Harare.
Heard about ‘paying your dues’– well Gonora Sounds leader and inspiration Daniel Gonora’s back-story makes him a bone fide member of the dues-paying club. Twenty years ago the blind guitarist and song writer was a key player in Zimbabwe’s ground-breaking Jairos Jiri Band, a group that tragically imploded as successive members passed away. Forced to …
Track: Happening afro-soul fusionists Jembaa Groove present ‘Mokole’ ahead of debut album ‘Susuma’
A lot of bands get together from chance meetings in a bar, or a gig or knowing friends of friends but not usually after a chat in a Berlin kindergarten playground. Still that’s how Jembaa Groove got started, co-founding musicians Yannick Nolting and Eric Owusu on the school pick up run, bonding over the possibilities …
Album Review: Dowdelin – ‘Lanmou Lanmou’: Creole rhythms and a Soul-Jazz twist make for the sound of now.
It’s been over a couple of years since Lyon located fusionists Dowdelin were last seen bouncing across the WOMAD stage and pulling the horizontal sun soakers up onto their dancing feet. Now comes evidence of renewed activity with their latest album ‘Lanmou Lanmou’, available from 28th January from Underdog Records, and proof that the band …
Track: Lyon based post punk experimentalists Societe Etrange preview their pulsating new album ‘Chance’.
New to Bongo Joe’s roster but long established in the Lyon post punk/electronic scene, Societe Etrange look set to oscillate more widely with their pulsating new album ‘Chance’ (released on the Bongo Joe label March 4th). Evolving from the partnership of Antoine Bellini (electronics) and Romain Hervault (bass) with roots in their city’s cluster of …
Track: The Ano Nobo Quartet preview ‘The Strings of Sao Domingos’ album – guitar driven rhythms and sumptuous songs from Cabo Verde’s soul.
From the very noble Ostinato Records comes news of more discoveries as part of their enlightening exploration into the music of Cabo Verde. You may already have been knocked out by the label’s ground breaking trio of retrospective releases from the West African islands but now they are reaching out further to feature contemporary sounds …
Track: Buscabulla cover the classic ‘Cantares’ with their sultry synth pop brilliance
Now here’s a winter warmer – Ultra-hip onetime Brooklyn based, Puerto Rican twosome Buscabulla have sneaked out (via Ribbon Music) this cover of the classic ‘Cantares’ to keep us in touch. Originally recorded by El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, the Buscabulla partners, Luis Alfredo Del Valle and Raquel Berrios, bathe the song in their …
Album Review: Vis-A-Vis – The Best Of Vis-A-Vis In Congo Style
Remember those stellar studio bands of the late sixties/early seventies – The Meters, The Section, The Wrecking Crew, Muscle Shoals – defining the sound of where a record was made and fuelling the hit factories. Switch over to West Africa and you find the same thing, the tightest groups of session players at the source …
Album Review: Tout Bleu – Otium
London, New York, Paris Munich, everybody’s talking about…well it’s got to be Geneva, home to one of the most vibrant European scenes that gets broadcast to the rest of us through the antennae of Bongo Joe records. The label has offered up some fine home town releases this year from Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp, …
Album Review: James McVinnie – Counterpoint
What is it about the tags neo-classical or contemporary-classical that often brings out that immediate ‘not for me’ reaction in people? Too much baggage, too many connotations associated with that word to the right of the hyphon. It’s musicians like organist and sound sculptor James McVinnie who can help shift mindsets . He may be …
Album Review: Richard Dawson & Circle – Henki
Think of those records inspired by plants…Stevie’s sprawling ‘Journey Through The Secret Life of’, Edgar Froese’s pondering on ‘Epsilon in Malaysian Pale’, Genesis hailing a ‘Return of the Giant Hogweed’ or maybe the Cocteau’s glistening ‘Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops’. Judged sublime or ridiculous depends on your starting point but one thing is clear, the mix of botany …