Average EP (Junior Executive)

Average - S/T EP

Junior Executive

The press release makes no mention of the fact that the lead track on this rather brilliant EP is full on Afrobeat/Disco... something you'd think would seem worth shouting about. Haye Haye is, in fact, a really, really infectious groove that blends triumphal, South African sounding, exultations with classic disco bass twanging and jangly guitars. The result is a cacophonous exhortation to dance, and while the kick and snare combo is perhaps a little over-compressed, there's no doubt it makes us want to freaking boogie.

Another reason to love this record is its bewitching diversity. From the aforementioned uptempo of Haye Haye we dive straight into the atmospheric, melancholic Cold; wherein a brooding, resonant guitar refrain loops over long pads, 80s drum machines and plaintive wailing, before climaxing in a proggy latin guitar section and a reverb-drenched vocal call. It's like Alan Parsons, Manu Dibango, Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel all at once.

Finishing off this 3-tracker is Hisingen. With library style grooves aplenty it slowly, ever so slowly, develops its ever so slow loops, gradually introducing flutes and what I assume is a Norwegian vocal which is so short it's hard to imagine how it was conceived.

Eminently listenable stuff.

We couldn't find many stockists of this badboy but they have it at Redeye Records so get in there while you can!

Manu Dibango - Electric Africa

Manu Dibango

Electric Africa

Tidal Waves Music

TWM10

Manu Dibango needs little introduction, born in Cameroon in 1933, Manu developed a musical style fusing jazz, funk, and traditional Cameroonian music. He’s definitely among the best known African artists outside of Africa. Collaborations were numerous and include top acts like Fela Kuti, Herbie Hancock, Bill Laswell, Sly & Robbie, Don Cherry and Bernie Worrell. In addition to selling hundreds of thousands of copies of the albums he recorded, he played such huge venues as Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden.

In 1972, at 40 years of age, Manu Dibango did something almost unheard of for an African artist – he had a pop hit. His song “Soul Makossa” became an enormous hit which influenced popular music for decades to follow. First picked up by David Mancuso (The Loft), “Soul Makossa” took New York dance floors by storm & in July 1973 it became the first disco record to enter the Billboard Top 40—an early instance of Western pop experiencing a paradigm shift thanks to Africa. The song’s chant of “ma-mako ma-ma-sa mako-mako sa” echoes through the greatest-selling pop album of all-time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and it’s in the DNA of the music of Kanye West, Rihanna, A Tribe Called Quest, Akon and The Fugees.

By 1985, Dibango was back in Paris, one of the most successful African artists in the world, to start on the recordings for the Electric Africa album. This album hooked Manu and the Soul Makossa Gang up with New York avant garde producer Bill Laswell, jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, Parliament-Funkadelic keyboard player Bernie Worrell, Pan African synthesist Wally Badarou, New York guitarist Nicky Scopelitis, African drummer Aiyb Dieng and Malian kora virtuoso Mory Kante. This means of working gave Manu and Laswell license to fuse synthesizers and kora, talking drums and samples, ngoni and electric guitar. What it all boils down to is world beat in its truest sense.

Electric Africa remains one of Manu’s strongest albums. His deep growl of a honey and sandpaper voice and the energetic honk of his saxophone merge with the seamless samples and the myriad hand percussion and overt funkiness of his band. Herbie Hancock plays on three tracks, contributing an amazing electric piano solo on the title track and interacting with Manu’s sax while weaving to the warp of Mory Kante’s kora during “L’arbre a Palabres.” Similarly but more subtly, Laswell, Badarou and Worrell play dueling synthesizers in and around the band throughout ”Pata Piya.” All of this makes the album an hypnotic & upbeat Afro-Funk classic that will rock every part your body (and mind). Now finally back available as a limited vinyl edition for the first time since 1985.

Buy here: https://lightintheattic.net/releases/3536-electric-africa

Aleem - Hooked on Your Love (Don Dayglow Edit)

DD back once again with another slice of hands-in-the-air Disco goodness... this time he's re-worked Aleem's classic featuring Calibur, Leroy Burgess and a young Luther Vandross.

Free Download from the link below