African music
theartsdesk on Vinyl 61: Amy Winehouse, Krust, Motörhead, Extrawelt, Sade, Chase and Status and more
Thomas H. Green
Welcome to the penultimate 2020 edition of the world’s vastest, most musically wide-ranging, regularly posted, online vinyl reviews. This year vinyl boomed, especially in the wake of COVID-19, with gig-goers stuck at home but wanting new music. 2020’s sales are now heading for the £100 million mark, vinyl’s biggest year since 1990. When theartsdesk on Vinyl began, six years ago, it was a very different picture. All things must pass, and vinyl eventually will, but that’s for the churls! Let’s enjoy these boom times. So check out the reviews below, which run the gamut from the grungiest thrash Read more ...
Tim Cumming
There have been Felabrations, stage musicals, bands featuring his sons Seun and Femi that have continued the legacy. There has been the slew of re-releases from his massive catalogue, and a number of films, including Alex Gibney’s Finding Fela, and the 1982 classic, Music is the Weapon. In his afterlife, the legendary Fela Kuti and his music feels more alive than ever. More than 20 years after his death, and a funeral that attracted a million mourners (police claimed there were no crimes committed in Lagos over its three days) Afrobeat continues to pull dancers onto the floor in order to Read more ...
Barney Harsent
The cast list for Song Machine…, the seventh album from virtual virtuosos Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, is the size of some festival line-ups: Beck, Fatoumata Diawara, Imagination’s Leee John, Peter Hook, Robert Smith, Slaves, Slowthai, St Vincent, Joan As Police Woman, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Skepta and long-time collaborator Tony Allen are just some of the artists featured here and, while impressive, the roll call poses a question. Namely, how do you pull all those disparate voices together and end up with something that sounds coherent, composed and, well, whole?The answer Read more ...
joe.muggs
There’ve been plenty of global breakout successes from Nigeria in the past decade; D’banj, Davido, Wizkid and more – but by far the most recognisable to the international audience is Damini Ogulu aka Burna Boy. And doesn’t he know it. His last album was called African Giant, and this one – his sixth – plays on that, depicting him on the cover in cartoon form as a titan, striding over modern roads and ancient monuments. Everything about it radiates confidence before you’ve even hit play – and that includes the tracklist, which very notably doesn’t include any US megastars, unlike most of his Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A couple of years ago a vinyl white label appeared of a track called “Crumbling Down”. It was a breath of fresh air. Warmly crafted Afro-centric percussion, pared back but persuasive, it dragged the ears in, emanating a heads-down beachside vibe. Once the listener/dancer was fully ensconced, a gentle plinking tune led into the melancholic lyric loop, “As it all starts crumbling down”, before echoing bleeps sent things into space. Like much of the best dance music, it was beautifully simple but effective. By an artist called Zapatilla, it now appears at the end of his debut album, the rest of Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Peter Culshaw’s periodic global music radio update is back, quicker than usual as there is some catching up to do. There’s a focus on Ennio Morricone, who died this week - with his amazing range from Westerns to lush soundscapes and experimental hipster 1960s hipster pop. A secondary focus is on re-issued and new Moroccan grooviness - the wonderfully stoned 1970s soundscapes of Abdou El Omari to the hot off the press fabulousness of Bab l’Bluz. Other sizzling new stuff includes a rework of Saint Germain’s “I Want You To Get Together Right Now”(who sampled it from Marlena Shaw in the first Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Lockdown’s easing and the record shops are opening here and there. So, to help vinyl junkies on their way, here’s 7000 words of reviews, capturing the best of the last couple of months’ releases on plastic. As ever, the sounds go everywhere, from hip hop to post-punk to Moroccan trance music. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHThe Four Owls Nocturnal Instinct (High Focus) + TrueMendous Huh? (High Focus) + Telemachus Boring & Weird Historical Music (High Focus)Three albums from Brighton’s High Focus Records which showcase many kinds of verve and ambition. The label is best known for nurturing the Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Peter Culshaw’s occasional global radio music show comes blinking into the light after lockdown, as MusicBox radio’s studio In London’s Clerkenwell has tentatively, antiseptically, opened. In the months since March, we have lost numerous kings of rhythm, including, as mentioned in the show, Florian Schneider and Little Richard.This edition focuses on the legacy of the great drum legend Tony Allen, who pioneered Afro-beat with Fela Kuti. We talk to Stephen Budd, Tony Allen's friend, as well as an obsessive Afro-beat collector and DJ. He has had an illustrious career in music, from being a Read more ...
Barney Harsent
There’s a moment halfway through Khruangbin’s latest album that succinctly sums up the melting-pot model this band have made their own. It’s “Pelota”, a Spanish-influenced song, based on a Japanese film, played by a Texan three-piece with a Thai name. It’s also very, very good indeed.If Khruangbin is a name new to you, then you’ll need to know that, on their previous three albums (including Hasta el Cielo, 2019’s dub reworking of their second, Con Todo El Mundo), they have dabbled in dub reggae, Middle Eastern psychedelia, 1960s Thai music, funk and soul. For a band who seem to be happy Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The debut album from one woman outfit [MONRHEA] shows off the seriously impolite electronica that’s blossoming in East Africa. Electronic sounds from Africa are over-represented in Europe by jolly pop and elegantly faceless house music, but there’s a whole lot more going on. Via uber-producer and Killing Joker Martin “Youth” Glover’s Youth Sounds label, this album gives an exciting taste of the wild gumbo of dancefloor-friendly experimentation that’s on the bubble there.[MONRHEA] – and I’m going to lose the square brackets and caps from hereon – hails from Athi River, a town outside Nairobi Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
After C19 delays theartsdesk on Vinyl is back. My initial policy, reckoning that new vinyl would dry up under COVID conditions, was to do regular lockdown mini-editions with the material already set aside here, until it ran out. That didn’t work out. The vinyl, to my surprise, kept on coming. Global crisis be damned! A backlog grew! Thus, theartsdesk on Vinyl 57 is a catch-up on the past couple of months. Due to these factors, a few more records I’d like to have covered were missed and a couple I should have covered this time are held back until June. Also, morose and sombre sounds didn’t Read more ...
mark.kidel
Rituals of death call for music: to see the spirits of the dead off on their journey to the other side, to express the grief of those left behind or to celebrate the cycle of life and death. Fra Fra are a quartet from the predominantly Muslim northern part of Ghana - a much drier region than more forested areas of the south.They specialise in music that's performed at traditional funeralsAlthough claims are made for the links between the music of this region and the blues, it feels generally less familiar or connected to field hollers and country blues than the music of Mali. Percussion and a Read more ...