afrobeat
News: Blue Lab Beats will release their debut album for Blue Note in February: hear the sunbright Afro grooves of ‘Motherland Journey’ feat. Fela Kuti and KillBeatz
IT’S A meeting of musical values as well being a perfect colour match: the none-more-esteemed Blue Note Records, 82 years in the game, has announced that the latest addition to its proud roster, the bright Afrojazz textures of London’s Blue Lab Beats, will release their first album for the label, Motherland Journey, on February 25th. …
See: Global beat fusionists Black Flower preview ‘O Fogo’ from incoming album ‘Magma’.
The pronunciation might be tricky but you can’t question the discerning taste of Belgian label Sdban Ultra in the nu-jazz, funk and grooves department. More proof comes with the label’s first taster from Black Flower’s soon-to-come ‘Magma’LP (due 28th January), ‘O Fogo’. Four albums in and Black Flower have been steadily sharpening their kaleidoscopic blend …
News: Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp are set for an album in July; hear ‘Beginning’
IS IT a band, is it a group, is it a collective or an ensemble? No it’s the one and only Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp, the makers of the most essential music that may have passed you by. Revolving around the mercurial bassist/composer Vincent Bertholet and emerging from the Geneva avant music scene in …
News: Rey Sapienz & The Congo Techno Ensemble announce a July album; hear a new track, ‘Eza Makambo’
IN CASE you hadn’t noticed, the sound of afrobeat is taking on a new dimension: riding on a surge of youthful energy; absorbing rap’s bite and electro’s drive; committed to the cutting edge but respectful of sources. Rey Sapienz and his new collective The Congo Techno Ensemble look set to add their dynamic to this …
Album review: Kasai Allstars – ‘Black Ants Always Fly Together, One Bangle Makes No Sound’: maybe more restrained, but still surprises
SOMETIMES a record comes along that disrupts your expectations. Since their debut album in 2008, Kasai Allstars have been one of the cornerstones of Congotronics, that vibrant assemblage of polyrhythms and scrapyard instrumentation which bolted a whole new wing to the afrobeat star-liner. Buzz drums, wired-up thumb pianos, hubcap percussion and salvaged guitars mixed with …
See: Blood Wine or Honey feat. Zoe Brewster – ‘Testing Time’: popping with colour, welcome this hypno-Afro-tropicalia funk into your world
THEY call their particular thang hypno-tropicalia, and it certainly is that; and whoah! so much more. Much more. They paint their irresistible, off-the-wall, deliciously weird groove styles in the brightest colours, and it’s kinda, hmmm, hypno-Afro-tropicalia-jazz-funk-disco, strongly declamatory, punk-funk-jazz, all the compounds and inversions of that. It’s out there on an underlit dancefloor in the …
See: Moonshine – ‘Ginseng (Zaire Space Program: Act I)’: utopian Afrofunk where Congo meets Canada
LINKING together the musics, the aesthetics and traditions of Paris, Portugal and the the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pan-African collective Moonshine have dropped a brace of singles – “Malembe” and the deeply bassy, Afrofunk groove of “Ginseng (Zaire Space Program: Act I)”, which we’e concerned with here, featuring the Paris-African talents of Bamao Yende, …
Album Review: Femi Kuti + Made Kuti – Legacy +
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no afrobeat scholar, but there’s something undeniably enticing about a double album calling itself Legacy+ that’s attached to the Kuti name. I don’t even think this is necessarily limited or limiting, either, because the work of Fela Kuti is something that you’re likely aware of even if …
TRACKS: See the video for Femi Kuti’s ‘Pà Pá Pà’ and hear Made Kuti’s ‘Your Enemy’ ahead of February’s twin albums
AFROBEAT founding father and steely political activist Fela Kuti gifted us a wondrous back catalogue investigating jazz, funk, hiphop, rock, traditional Nigerian musics, so much more, before passing in 1997. Of course, he also gifted us his son, Femi; and in turn Femi’s gifted us his son, Made, to continue that legacy and take it …
ALBUM REVIEW: Soothsayers – ‘We Are Many’: conscious beats science for straitened times
Soothsayers’ latest tickles your ears in all the right spots; the music evolves and shifts from a strong and aware roots through jazz and Afro and more, all the while softly educating you and guiding you and letting you know you have to be watchful, stay alert, and also stay strong and connected. That’s how we’re gonna get through all and any of this.