World / Traditional / India
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When Jako Maron reimagined Réunion island's politically-charged maloya sound on 'The electro Maloya experiments of Jako Maron', he focused on the genre's distinctive, revolutionary rhythms. Electro-plating the call-and-response thuds, he used the language of techno to upset the expected template, disrupting maloya's 6/8 pulse with modular bleeps and Roland kicks. He takes a different approach on 'Mahavélouz', focusing on the bobre, traditional maloya's only melodic instrument, a long bow amplified by a calabash that's known as the berimbau in Brazil. Maron was fascinated by the bobre's unique sonic signature, and noted that when it's usually played, it's drowned out by the louder percussive instruments. So he enlisted a number of traditional bobre performers to play a series of solos, using them to guide the album's four lead tracks and distorting and compressing the serrated hits until they stood confidently in front of his undulating roulér (bass drum) and sati (hi-hat) patterns.
"These four pieces are the culmination of my research into electronic maloya," explains Maron. "There's no need for words on this music; the bobre is the voice, and it is an ancestral voice. It's a reimagining of maloya kabaré in an electro form." This is the music that Maron has used to drive his recent live performances, so it prioritizes maloya's dancefloor potential. Swapping the traditional roulér and sati sounds for TR-606, TR-909 and TR-707 hits, he generates a hypnotic roll on opening track 'Paré po saviré' (rise up), forming a rubbery backdrop for Amemoutoulaop's acidic bobre twangs. Maron describes the track as a "call to bring spirits and people together", and using piercing feedback squeals to harmonize with the bobre, he introduces us to the voice that anchors the entire album. On 'Bék dann dir (try harder), he augments the bobre with glassy Korg Polysix chimes and Machinedrum sounds, and 'Zésprimaron'(the Maron spirit), ushers us towards a ceremony, shuffling his rhythm into a ritualistic throb, and using squelchy synth sounds to flutter into a trance.
Maron concludes his live bobre experiments with '1 piton 3 filaos' (one hill and three trees), and it's his most ambitious fusion, with hallucinatory flutes and technoid stabs rising weightlessly in-between Amemoutoulaop's frenetic performance. But this isn't the end of his investigation: Maron fleshes out 'Mahavélouz' with tonal studies that replicate the bobre synthetically. On 'Mdé prototrash', the characteristic ping is re-created by his modular system, and it's almost indistinguishable from the original instrument, buzzing and popping alongside Maron's surging percussion. The sound is more uncanny on 'dann kér Mahaveli' (in the heart of marvelous land) but no less affecting, knotted around synthetic bird calls and entrancing warbles. Even more idiosyncratic than its predecessors, 'Mahavélouz' is a bold step forward for Maron that builds on ancient foundations to construct a staggeringly new kind of dance music.
Prolific Portuguese musician and visual artist Jonathan Uliel Saldanha - of HHY & The Macumbas/The Kampala Unit - might be best known for his noisy, experimental excursions, but he's long been fascinated by the possibilities offered by the human voice. He's already composed a slew of choral pieces, such as 'Khōrus Anima', 'Del' and 'Plethora', and his last, 'Santa Viscera Tua', was an ambitious project for 150 voices. On 'Kembo', he builds on these experiences significantly, examining the commonality and shared spirituality of vocal music alongside the Kingdom Ulfame Choir, a seven-piece Uganda-based group of Congolese singers. The collaboration began at Nyege Nyege's Kampala studio, where Saldanha and the choir took the time to figure out their direction, singing together in an imagined language concocted from elements of Lingala, Swahili, Kikongo and French. Considering pre-linguistic communication, liturgical music and glossolalia (better known as speaking in tongues), their improvisations evolved into trances, with Saldanha's discreet electronic augmentations used only to accent the melodies and harmonies.
This process stands out immediately on opening track 'Boya Kotala' when the group trade poignant solos over Saldanha's aerated choral drones and ominous synthesized bass. The voices are suspended in time, cautiously referencing sacred music but disregarding the expected tropes, leaving hypnotic vapors that gust through the entire suite. 'Tokumisa Nzambe' is remarkably different, adding a brittle electro-acoustic pulse to the choir's tangled phrases that are ornamented with rhythmic chants and layered melodic outbursts. "Hallelujah," they repeat on 'Hosana', reaching back to familiar praise songs and building to a jubilant crescendo of voices. And later, on 'Nzambe Bolingo', the group's impassioned recitations are threaded through chopped, percussive vocalizations and exhalations. Taking a brief breather, Kingdom Molongi's words coalesce into a calming lullaby on the hushed 'Emanuel', and their appreciation of classic soul and gospel fizzes to the surface on 'Maloba ya Motema Nangai' with virtuosic wordless phrases that speak to the roots of the music, not its contemporary application.
'Kembo' is an album that investigates not just the mutability of language itself, but time, wondering how words and themes are reshaped as they tumble through history, picking up influences from various folk traditions, idiosyncratic pop forms and diverse quasi-religious expressions. Most of all though, Kingdom Molongi manage to highlight the enduring relationship between the voice and the spirit, and the transformative power of choral music.
Recorded in Kampala, 'Mapambazuko' pairs Peruvian artist and researcher Alejandra Cárdenas (aka Ale Hop) with Congolese guitarist Titi Bakorta, who locate a balmy junction between their respective approaches. Bakorta's debut album 'Molende', released on Nyege Nyege Tapes in 2023, was an eccentric rumination on his years performing a unique fusion of Congolese soukous and folk sounds, and 'Mapambazuko' picks up where it left off, looping Bakorta's wiry guitar solos around Cárdenas' psychedelic Afro-Latin rhythms and fractured synths. Cárdenas' last run of albums have bounced her around the stylistic map: on the acclaimed 'Agua Dulce', she deconstructed traditional Peruvian rhythms with Laura Robles, while she traversed radically different territory on 2021's 'The life of Insects', imagining an abstract universe from the inside of a terrarium. All this experience - in pop music, electroacoustic experimentation and avant-garde minimalism - is applied to 'Mapambazuko' as she skews Bakorta's exuberant themes with subtle sound design elements and powerful, uncompromising drumwork.
Opener 'Bonne année' is a twitchy, effervescent party starter, with a frenetic rhythm from Cárdenas that gradually picks up grit, only enhancing the vivid soukous-inspired phrases from Bakorta. And on the title track, Bakorta's rubbery improvisations sound as if they're bouncing off Cárdenas' dissociated whirrs and squeals, while the duo's furious pulse holds their raw experimentation in check. Their worlds collide even more conspicuously on 'Una cumbia en Kinshasa', that identifies the similarities between psychedelic Peruvian cumbia and Congolese pop, and on 'Así baila el sintetizador' they ratchet up the tempo, smudging Bakorta's fictile riffs into Cárdenas' zesty oscillations. The acceleration only lets up on the album's gauzy finale 'Nitaangaza', where Bakorta plays dizzy psych-rock wails over Cárdenas' syrup-laced thuds and lopsided drones. And the album is filled out with three exclusive remixes. Kenyan sound artist KMRU strips the beat from 'Nitaangaza' and brings out its latent sensuality, adding light-headed pads and soft-hearted tones to re-contextualize the original track.
On her rework, Cárdenas augments 'Una cumbia en Kinshasa' with an even more belligerent rhythm, cutting further into Bakorta's glistening riffs and eventually guiding the track into chattering chaos. While Flora Yin-Wong marches towards the end credits with a sultry, percussive version of 'Así baila el sintetizador'. Slowing it down to a crawl and emphasizing the eerie, artificial landscape, Yin-Wong shines moonlight on Bakorta and Cárdenas' sun-baked grooves, providing the necessary wind-down as the party comes to an end.
Paris-born electronic music pioneer and 1970s GRM alumni Ariel Kalma joins with multinational New York trio Asa Tone (Kaazi, Melati ESP, Tristan Arp) for a series of intergenerational, electro-acoustic studio conversations, exploring elasticity within rhythm and winds… or as one early listener observed “space and time.”
Following a chance encounter at Ariel’s studio in the Australian rainforest during the pandemic, Melati & Kaazi began recording long live takes with Kalma, weaving in bioluminescent synth improvisations from Tristan Arp remotely. Revisited a few years later between the members of Asa Tone’s respective homes in New York & Indonesia, “○” is the document of a significant moment in the lives of all the album’s players; an ode to memory and connection in an era of crisis, illuminated via flickering fragments of steel flute, kantilan, modular synthesizer, xaphoon, tenor sax, EWI, field recordings of the surrounding rainforest, and the human voice.
Recorded, written and produced by Asa Tone & Ariel Kalma.
Ariel Kalma: Western Concert Flute, Xaphoon, Tenor Saxophone, Voice
Melati ESP: EWI, Kantilan, Voice
Kaazi: Hydrasynth, Opsix, Percussion
Tristan Arp: Modular Synthesizer, Moog Sub37, Percussion
Additional percussion on *3 by Miles Myjavec
Mixed by Tristan Arp, Kaazi and Ariel Kalma.
Mastered by Jose Arentes at GRAMA, Porto.
Art Direction & Layout : Melati ESP, Kaazi, Biscuit.
Bahraini-British performer, Yazz Ahmed, is transforming what jazz means in 2017. This trumpet and flugelhorn-playing artist has worked with Radiohead and These New Puritans, experiments with electronic effects, and combines sounds from her shared heritage to author a new narrative for the genre. Part of the new wave of artists credited with stirring up the sound, including Kamasi Washington, Yussef Kamaal, Sons of Kemet and The Comet is Coming, Yazz Ahmed is thrilled by the possibilities of making something new. “I feel like I’m a part of modernising jazz and connecting it with audiences today,” Yazz says. “It’s exciting.”
Her new album ‘La Saboteuse’ is a deep exploration of both her British and Bahraini roots. Ably assisted by musicians including Lewis Wright on vibraphone, MOBO-winning new jazz kingpin Shabaka Hutchings on bass clarinet and Naadia Sherriff on Fender Rhodes keyboard, it’s composed of undulating rhythms, Middle Eastern melody and Yazz’s sonorous trumpet lines. The record sounds like the passage of a desert caravan, bathed in moonlight. The theme of ‘La Saboteuse’ is the sense of self-doubt that Yazz feels when she is creating, personified in a female saboteur, an anti-muse that spurs her into action. “Giving ‘her’ a name has really helped me to identify those negative voices we all get,” she says. “I know what it is and I know how to combat it.”
‘La Saboteuse’ will be released in four chapters incrementally, unravelling the story, before the full version is available. Each chapter has its own cover, with beautiful illustrations by Bristol artist Sophie Bass. “I feel really touched, nobody’s created art from my music before, it’s really special,” Yazz says.
Yazz spent her early childhood in Bahrain, her paternal homeland, before moving to London with her English mother at the age of nine. There, she became fascinated by her grandfather’s trumpet playing, and vowed to learn the instrument herself. “My grandfather, my mum’s dad, was a trumpet player, and I was quite taken by him, inspired. I wanted to learn the trumpet at school.” Jazz became her chosen form of expression, because “I loved the spirit of the music, the freedom. There’s a lot of joy, mystery. I connected with it”. Yazz’s sound is unique. Her take on jazz weaves in Arabic melodies to evocative, cinematic effect. “I love the sounds of Arabic music. The traditional folk singing is so heartfelt, elemental and passionate. I absorbed it as a child, but only in the past few years has it come to the surface in my playing and writing. I want to embrace my culture and my British jazz heritage, the music my grandfather played to me.”
Jazz has traditionally been a male-dominated sphere, though Yazz is challenging that notion. To start with she found it a hindrance, but has been empowered by a new wave of women musicians. “There are more female jazz musicians and attitudes are changing,” she says. “People see that women can play just as well as the men. But there are still areas that haven’t caught up with the rest of society. It’s getting better, but we can do more.”
Future-facing and fascinating, Yazz Ahmed is part of a glimmering new constellation in the jazz firmament. And her next project is destined to take her further into the stars. “I’m planning to write a piece inspired by the ever-changing structures of the universe,” she concludes.
“This album is a celebration of female courage, determination and creativity. In 2015, the Tomorrow’s Warriors commissioned me to write an extended work, to be performed by members of their Nu Civilisation Orchestra, for a concert at the Women of the World Festival, in London’s Southbank Centre, on International Women’s Day.
Whilst gathering ideas for my composition, I came across the character of Polyhymnia, the ancient Greek Muse of music, poetry and dance: a Goddess for the arts. Perhaps inspired by her, I conceived the form of a suite of movements, each dedicated to women of outstanding qualities, role models, with whom I felt a strong connection. Whereas La Saboteuse, the embodiment of my inner-destroyer and the catalyst for the creation of my last album, could be viewed as my anti-muse, maybe Polyhymnia herself became my Muse, inspiring an intense period of creativity, which resulted in the six pieces on this album.
Since its conception, composed and arranged over the six weeks leading up to the first rehearsal for the premiere, the music has evolved and expanded. During the recording process I began incorporating new elements and drawing on a wider pool of artists, including members of my own Hafla band, alongside some of my favourite musicians working on the London scene.
By sharing my musical response to the stories and achievements of these exceptional women, and celebrating the creativity and talents of my co-contributors, I hope to inspire others, in the words of Malala, “to be brave, to embrace the strength within themselves and realise their full potential” - Yazz Ahmed
Finding My Way Home is the debut release from British-Bahraini trumpet player, Yazz Ahmed.
The album is a collection of original compositions and improvisations, exploring the sounds and rhythms of Yasmeen’s Arabic heritage, revisiting memories from her early childhood in Bahrain. These are contrasted with pieces reflecting the classic British jazz from the 1950s and 60s, which was the soundtrack to her teenage years and was her gateway into improvised music.
Yazz’s Grandfather, Terry Brown, was a jazz trumpeter who played alongside Tubby Hayes, Ronnie Scott and as a member of the original John Dankworth Seven. He went on to become a successful record producer for Pye and Philips Records. Yazz picked up the trumpet inspired by the music and the stories that Terry shared with her.
Finding My Way Home also features the sublime talents of bass guitar virtuoso, Janek Gwizdala. Now widely regarded as one of the finest players in the world, Janek was actually a nineteen-year-old beginner on the trumpet when he and Yazz first met in the brass ensemble at the Merton Music Foundation. After a ten-year gap, their friendship was renewed, thanks to the power of Facebook. Noticing he would be visiting London during November 2008, Yazz asked Janek if he would be interested in recording a session of duets. Janek was delighted to accept, even though they had last played together when Yazz was just fourteen years old.
These intimate tracks, specially arranged for flugelhorn and bass guitar, recorded at the Cowshed in London, form the main body of the album. In addition to Yazz’s Affirmation, Stan Sulzmann’s Birthdays, Birthdays and the Miles Davis classic So What, the pair also recorded four spontaneous compositions, utilizing Arabic scales. These evocative and mysterious pieces, Embarkation, Al Muharraq, Birth of the Fool and Finding My Way Home, bind the album together but also become the vehicles for a musical journey of self-discovery.
Whist at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Yazz began writing for her first quintet. Two of her original compositions for this band, the poignant ballad, Conciliation and the Joe Henderson inspired Flip Flop, are performed here by Alam Nathoo tenor sax, John Bailey piano, Jay Darwish double bass and George Hart on drums.
Yazz also met Shabaka Hutchings while at the Guildhall. His bass clarinet playing is featured on Wah-Wah Sowahwah, the first of Yazz’s Arabic flavoured compositions, inspired by the session with Janek. The other musicians on this track are Simon Hale, playing Fender Rhodes, cellist, Chris Fish, Corrina Silvester - an expert in North African and Arabic hand drumming - and bass guitarist, Laurence Cottle.
The album closes with Finding My Way Home, which draws elements from the various recordings together to frame the most expansive of the improvised duets. The arc of this title track is a miniature version of the whole album. From the opening notes of the lone trumpet, crying out in the wilderness, it conjures images of a vast desert landscape and takes the listener on a sensuous journey. The caravan finally comes to rest at an oasis of cool calmness with Noel Langley’s orchestration, for the large ensemble, of Janek’s improvised coda, taken from the very first recording day.
Working on Finding My Way Home has inspired Yazz to form two new ensembles to reflect these recordings and the new compositions that have blossomed from this album. Ahmed’s new quintet had the pleasure of making their debut performance when opening the 2010 Brit Jazz Fest at Ronnie Scotts Jazz Club, London.
Subsequently the band received an array of positive reviews with Jazzwise Magazine highlighting Yazz’s flugelhorn playing and tipping her as a star of the future. Gary Crosby OBE includes Finding My Way Home in his top five releases of 2011.
Yazz Ahmed, hailed as one of the most influential trumpet players of her generation. An Ivor Novello award winning composer who makes sweeping epics that are rich with storytelling, depicting evocative ancient worlds and mythological muses. With her fourth studio album, A Paradise in the Hold, the British-Bahrani musician dives even deeper into her dual heritage and has come up with a treasure trove that draws on traditional music and stories from her childhood home. Ahmed writes for the voice for the first time, with lyrics inspired by Bahraini wedding poems and the yearning songs of the pearl divers. Deeply textural, expansive and full of potent performances, the album charts the heroic voyages of the jewel-hunters of yore, who sailed home through rough seas with precious cargo, and Ahmed’s own voyage of self-discovery over the past decade.
“A thread in my work has been searching for, establishing and, now, finally embracing and celebrating my cultural identity,” she says. Whereas she explored Arabian music more generally with her earlier material, this release is more explicitly linked to her homeland. “If my first album, 2011’s Finding My Way Home, represents the first steps on this path then with A Paradise In The Hold, I’ve arrived at a deeper understanding of how my British and Bahraini heritage can co-exist, in personal as well as musical terms.”
Ahmed began A Paradise in the Hold’s journey back in 2014, on a research trip in Bahrain, during her Jazzlines Fellowship. She’d trawl local bookshops looking for poems and lyrical inspiration. Many came from wedding songs, which were “a lot about beauty and connecting beauty with nature,” she says. Deepening her connection to the tradition, her grandfather even sang her some songs from his own wedding day. At the same time, she became fascinated by the celebratory music of women’s drumming circles and how they contrasted the work songs of the pearl divers. The latter dangerous pursuit has since ceased, though the divers’ sorrowful music – sung and clapped in a polyrhythmic style known as fijiri – lives on.
“They were songs that encouraged the fishermen to stay in good spirits, or songs about missing your loved ones,” says Ahmed. Some of the former pearl divers have formed choirs that tour around the Gulf and she caught a performance by the Pearl Divers of Muharraq, the name of her former hometown. “It gave me an opportunity to connect on a deeper level with the music that I grew up with as a child, but didn’t really embrace at the time.”
Ahmed grew up in Bahrain until the age of nine and lived there during the Gulf War in the early 90s. While she has happy memories of her childhood, many were overshadowed by conflict, like “having a gas mask and not being able to go to school. We went to school in people’s garages,” she says. “I remember the sirens going off when there was a bomb threat, and closing the curtains, turning off all the lights, and covering the plughole in the bathtub so no poisonous gases could get in.”
She moved to London with her mother and sisters in 1992 but says, “I felt like I didn’t quite belong and I didn’t know why that was. For a long time, I would lie about my heritage because of how Arab and Muslim people were represented in American films and British dramas. When I was at school, I never said that I was half Bahraini.” Music, however, helped to strengthen her sense of identity. She saw links between the jazz she studied at university and Arabian classical music, and started to learn Arabic. “I started to rediscover my mixed heritage,” she adds. “And that’s when I started to remember all this music that I grew up hearing but never fully engaged with.”
The fruits of Ahmed’s 2014 research trip became a 90-minute suite, Alhaan Al Siduri, which she performed the following year in both the UK and Bahrain. It’s named for the character Siduri from folk tale the Epic of Gilgamesh: “a wise woman who lives on an island of absolute beauty, which some scholars have suggested may be Bahrain,” Ahmed explains.
She has reworked the suite’s main theme into album opener ‘She Stands On The Shore’, which sets the tone for an inky odyssey through mermaids, goddesses, sirens and, on ‘Dancing Barefoot’, a runaway bride; and love, loss, new beginnings and a newfound freedom.
Ahmed has always been drawn to stories of women in mythology – her last album, 2019’s Polyhymnia, was based on the Greek goddess of poetry and dance – but this time she has wider intentions. “I want to change the narrative about Arab women,” says Ahmed. “A lot of people think that Arab women are just oppressed. But in Bahrain there are plenty of creative women trying to do something different in the world.” Ahmed notes how Arabic music has been stereotypically used in western entertainment and she wanted to challenge that perception. “We hear it a lot in movies to represent the desert, or poor villagers,” she says, “but you rarely see it representing strong women, for example.”
Alhaan Al Siduri formed the basis of Ahmed’s album but it has evolved ambitiously over the following decade, during performances both solo and with orchestras. She expanded tracks with intricate sound design and added multiple trumpet parts. “I learned to think of them as antiphonal, so you can hear them from different angles,” she says. “And so it feels like you’re surrounded by this very majestic instrument.” The album’s texture, meanwhile, also stems from the field recordings she used to form loops and patterns, a technique Ahmed expanded upon with the track she made for US TV network Adult Swim’s jazz compilation New Jazz Century. On A Paradise in the Hold, ‘Dancing Barefoot’ is particularly exquisite, where vibraphonist Ralph Wyld played milk bottle tops and used cello bows made from coat hangers, “to conjure the feeling of a mind spiralling into a dream,” says Ahmed. Equally visceral, on ‘To The Lonely Sea’ collaborator Jason Singh created a “vocal sculpture” to echo the wind and waves.
Notably, Ahmed hadn’t written for the voice until now. For A Paradise In The Hold, she penned lyrics in English, which she then translated to Arabic, or, on ‘Though My Eyes Go To Sleep My Heart Does Not Forget You’, adapted the words from a pearl divers’ standard. She worked with a range of impressive singers to bring her vision to life: Brigitte Beraha, Natacha Atlas, Randolph Matthews and Alba Nacinovich. The voice of her father, meanwhile, can be heard on standout track ‘Into The Night’, which lands you in the centre of a percussive hubbub and which Ahmed intended as a celebration of female independence. “He was trying to conduct the recording session in the family house,” she says of her dad. “Everyone was gathered in the sitting room and I recorded some of the ululations and clapping that you can hear in the track. I’m so glad I got to have my family on the album.”
The collaborators on the album in particular, percussionist Corrina Silvester and the greatly missed giant of the jazz world and Yazz’s dear friend, drummer, Martin France, helped Ahmed to strengthen the connection between the two worlds; A Paradise In The Hold is a bold fusion that reveals its riches more with each rewarding listen. “It’s another step in my evolution of making music,” says Ahmed. “There’s so much beauty in Bahraini music. I hope this album gives people a flavour of how vibrant its culture is.”
Carrying on from recent archival releases from masters of Indian classical tradition such as Kamalesh Maitra and the Dagar Brothers, Black Truffle is pleased to present a previously unheard recording of a concert by Pakistani vocalist Salamat Ali Khan. Born to a musician family in Hoshiarpur in the northwestern state of Punjab, Khan moved with his family to Lahore in Pakistan after the 1947 partition of India, becoming a child musical prodigy. Khan was a master of the kyhal form of Hindustani classical vocal music, a style integrating influences from Middle Eastern musical traditions that gives the singer a great deal of improvisational freedom. Travelling widely across the globe from the 1960s until his death in 2001, Khan approached ragas performed in the kyhal style as expressive forums for risk-taking improvisation, enlivened by ceaseless ornamental invention.
This remarkable recording was captured by Michael Hönig (of krautrock legends Agitation Free) in concert at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie as part of the MetaMusik festival in 1974 (which also featured Nico, Tangerine Dream, and Roberto Laneri’s Prima Materia, among many others). Khan, who is also heard accompanying himself on a specially tuned alpine zither (in place of the traditional swarmandal, an Indian style of zither), is joined by Shaukat Hussein Khan on tabla and Hussein Bux Khan on harmonium. The lack of a familiar underlying tanpura drone gives this performance a weightless, floating quality, with all three of the musicians playing masterfully with the interaction between silence and the pulse propelling each section of the raag. As Khan explains in his opening remarks, this performance of the rainy season Raag Megh is divided into three parts, each with its own tempo and rhythmic scheme (tala). The opening vilambit, in a twelve-beat tala, stretches out for over twenty minutes, lingering for a long time in a space of meditative calm, Khan lightly strumming the zither while exploring the lower end of his range in languorously extended notes. Virtuoso tabla interjections at first barely state the tempo, and the interplay between musicians is so spacious that we hear scraps of audience noise and the squeak of the harmonium’s mechanism in between the notes. Gradually picking up rhythmic definition and melodic complexity, after around fifteen minutes the music builds dramatically, with Khan letting out emotive yelps and swooping scalar shapes ranging across his full vocal range. This flows seamlessly into the following jhaptal, at a faster tempo in ten beats, which then makes way for the concluding teental, very fast in sixteen beats, which becomes a frantic improvisational exchange of daring rhythmic disruptions from the tabla, flowing harmonium melodies, and a stunning variety of vocal approaches from Khan, ranging from rapid-fire staccato consonants to guttural growls. Accompanied by stunning black and white concert photographs, the LP also contains a moving and entertaining recollection from acclaimed German musicologist Peter Pannke, looking back on his experience assisting Khan and his musicians in Berlin at the Metamusik festival (including a mouth-watering description of a feast cooked by the maestro himself). As Pannke describes in his account of attending the concert, the beauty and spiritual intensity of this music leaves the listener speechless.
Paris-born electronic music pioneer and 1970s GRM alumni Ariel Kalma joins with multinational New York trio Asa Tone (Kaazi, Melati ESP, Tristan Arp) for a series of intergenerational, electro-acoustic studio conversations, exploring elasticity within rhythm and winds… or as one early listener observed “space and time.”
Following a chance encounter at Ariel’s studio in the Australian rainforest during the pandemic, Melati & Kaazi began recording long live takes with Kalma, weaving in bioluminescent synth improvisations from Tristan Arp remotely. Revisited a few years later between the members of Asa Tone’s respective homes in New York & Indonesia, “○” is the document of a significant moment in the lives of all the album’s players; an ode to memory and connection in an era of crisis, illuminated via flickering fragments of steel flute, kantilan, modular synthesizer, xaphoon, tenor sax, EWI, field recordings of the surrounding rainforest, and the human voice.
Recorded, written and produced by Asa Tone & Ariel Kalma.
Ariel Kalma: Western Concert Flute, Xaphoon, Tenor Saxophone, Voice
Melati ESP: EWI, Kantilan, Voice
Kaazi: Hydrasynth, Opsix, Percussion
Tristan Arp: Modular Synthesizer, Moog Sub37, Percussion
Additional percussion on *3 by Miles Myjavec
Mixed by Tristan Arp, Kaazi and Ariel Kalma.
Mastered by Jose Arentes at GRAMA, Porto.
Art Direction & Layout : Melati ESP, Kaazi, Biscuit.
Martin Khanja (aka Lord Spike Heart) and Sam Karugu emerge from Nairobi's flourishing underground metal scene as former members of the bands Lust of a Dying Breed and Seeds of Datura. Together in 2019 they formed Duma (Darkness in Kikuyu) with Sam abandoning bass for production and guitars and Lord Spike Heart providing extreme vocals to the project.
Recorded at Nyege Nyege Studios in Kampala over three months in mid 2019 their self-titled debut album fuses the frenetic euphoria, unrelenting physicality and rebellious attitude of hardcore punk and trash metal with bone-crunching breakcore and raw, nihilist industrial noise through a claustrophobic vortex of visceral screams.
The savant mix of brutally adrenalized drums, caustic industrial trap, shredding grindcore inspired guitars and abrupt speed changes create a darkly atmospheric menace and is lethal on tracks like the opener "Angels and Abysses" , "Omni" or "Uganda with Sam".
The gruelling slow techno dirges and monolithic vocals on "Pembe 666" or "Sin Nature" add a pinch of dramatic inevitability bringing a new sense of theatricality and terrifying fate awaiting into the record's progression.
A sinister sonic aggression of feral intensity with disregard for styles, Duma promises to impact the burgeoning African metal scene moving it into totally new, boundary-challenging experimental territories.
The second LP compendium of Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru’s early solo piano works, recorded throughout the 1960s – finally available again. Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru is a true original – her compositions and unique playing style live somewhere between Erik Satie, Debussy, liturgical music of the Coptic Ethiopian Church, and Ethiopian traditional music. It is some of the most moving piano music you will ever hear!
These original compositions, performed by Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru herself on solo piano, were originally self-released in Germany in small editions as fundraisers for orphanages, support organizations for widows of war victims, and other philanthropic causes. We are humbled and proud to present this album in collaboration with the EMAHOY TSEGE MARIAM MUSIC PUBLISHER and Foundation, and to assist in continuing her life-long mission of using music as a vessel to care for those who have been abandoned by society, or harmed by strife.
Black vinyl LP comes in black inner-sleeves and heavy cardstock jacket with color printing and gold-foil stamping, and song notes by the composer herself. Restored and remastered by Timothy Stollenwerk.
Jess Sah Bi is well-known as half of the legendary duo Jess Sah Bi & Peter One who brought homegrown Country-Americana to the West African masses with their smash debut Our Garden Needs Its Flowers in the mid-1980s. Touring stadiums and reaching listeners worldwide, their music has racked up millions of spins on YouTube and remains imprinted in the hearts of Ivorians of a certain age. ATFA reissued their album in 2018, garnering critical acclaim from publications including Pitchfork and Rolling Stone and reaching a new generation of listeners outside Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire).
Sometime in the early 90s, Die Sahbi—or Jesse, as he known to friends—became gravely ill with an unknown ailment and almost died. He visited various doctors and all kinds of religious healers and nothing helped. One day he went down to an Evangelical Christian revival in his neighborhood. They prayed over him and he was delivered. He says, “Their prayers helped chase out whatever demons and unhealthy spirits were inside me. After that my illness went away. When I went to the United States a few months later on an exchange program I wanted to make music to thank God because I was saved.” He recorded an album of music praising God in order to honor a promise he made to himself at the depths of his desperation in the hospital. The album Jesus-Christ Ne Deçoit Pas [Jesus Christ Does Not Disappoint] came out in 1991 and sold around 3000 cassettes in Ivory Coast. The master tape was lost along the way so the recording has never been on digital platforms until now.
Jesse didn’t have much time to record while visiting South Carolina, hence the relatively short album, 6 songs including two reprises for filler. A local pastor connected him with a studio and some American musicians (Robert Fortner and Gary Davis) to help. They added acoustic guitar, percussion and keyboard accompaniment to Jesse’s soaring French and Gouro vocals, harmonica and finger-picked acoustic. The resulting recording is deeply soothing and contemplative music that perfectly compliments the songs already embraced by millions.
But he had to find the rest of the studio expenses—$600 total—which he secured drawing cartoons for UNICEF. Jesse is Ivory Coast’s first political cartoonist, a vocation for which he was widely celebrated at the time. It also made him a few enemies which lead to him leaving the country permanently a few years later.
Jesus-Christ Ne Deçoit Pas is Jess Sah Bi’s first and only gospel album. Fortunately, fans responded with enthusiasm: widespread radio airplay and concerts followed, along with a growing solo profile in the country. The first big gospel artists in Ivory Coast were the duo Mathieu et Constance, who emerged in 1989. There was a bigger gospel music movement in English-speaking counties like Ghana and Nigeria (Christians make up roughly 40% of the population in Ivory Coast, slightly less than Muslims).
Jesse didn’t have any intention of working in Christian music but he realized, “You don’t make music to make money—you want to send a message.”
In the years since Jesus-Christ’s release, gospel music in Ivory Coast has grown to become a key part of music culture in the country. Spiritual music appears in community actives across the public and private spectrum from religious gatherings and parties to television broadcasts and music festivals. And, as it has evolved and indigenized locally, gospel music has picked up elements of traditional Ivorian music, reggae and soul.
The album ultimately precipitated the demise of the duo, who were soon separated geographically as Peter One relocated to Nashville. He went on to become a nurse and release a successful solo album on Verve following the ATFA collaboration. Nowadays Jesse lives in the Bay Area and continues to record and perform music wherever and whenever he has the chance. He is publishing a new book of humorous cartoons in 2025 and his most recent album Never Give Up came out in 2020.
At the end of 1970, having worked on his free jazz “made in France” and, with his Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra, sung the blues with all the regional accents of the country, François Tusques made his contribution to the traditional music of a region he knows well: Brittany. With the electric bass of Tanguy Le Doré and the bombards and bagpipes of Jean-Louis Le Vallegant, Gaby Kerdoncuff and Philippe Lestrat, the Intercommunal becomes a kind of Brotherhood Of Breizh. But if the swell and the sway remind us of Chris McGregor, the repetitions and dissonances soon rock the boat. Bracing, the wind in Brittany!
If the jazz of François Tusques is “free”, his spirit is even more so: having recorded Free Jazz with other like-minded Frenchmen (Michel Portal, François Jeanneau, Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin and Charles Saudrais), the pianist had covered a lot of ground, with Barney Wilen (Le Nouveau Jazz) or even solo (Piano Dazibao and Dazibao N°2), so as not to repeat himself…
In 1971 he founded the Inter Communal Free Dance Music Orchestra which, as the notes the this album stated, “is an interpretation of a music which sythesizes the different communities living and working in France.” In 1976, on the first album (L’Inter Communal) we can already hear Tusques playing without borders in the company of Carlos Andreu (vocals), Michel Marre (trumpet and saxophone), Jo Maka (saxophone) and Ramadolf (trombone). It is a meeting between jazz and music from Catalonia, Occitanie and Africa. So far so good, but what about Brittany, that, Tusques knows “by heart”?
Having lived for a long time in Nantes, he would expand his ‘brittanitude’ on the canal linking the aforementioned city to Brest by playing with, for example the Diaouled-Ar-Menez. With these “devils from the mountain” who, under the baton of Yann Goasdoué, worked throughout the 1970s on the renewal of music from Brittany, Tusques met, notably, Tanguy Ledoré and invited him one day, with trois bombards and some bagpipes (Jean-Louis Le Vallegant, Gaby Kerdoncuff and Philippe Lestrat), to join the ranks of the Intercommunal. And so they set of towards a new music from Brittany, as the title states; Vers une Musique bretonne nouvelle!
With percussion from Samuel Ateba and Kilikus, the association launches the ‘bombardier’: the repetitions and dissonance of the different members all serve a common cause however: the dance, which is always the reason for the party. This sets a whole universe spinning, which can bring to mind Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood Of Breath (“La rencontre”) when not taking on board waltz, swing, blues and gavotta or even revealing mysteries like those of Gurdjieff (“Les racines de la montagne” or “Le cheval” sung by Andreu). Only one thing to say to this Brotherhood Of Breizh: Mersi!
At the end of 1970, having worked on his free jazz “made in France” and, with his Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra, sung the blues with all the regional accents of the country, François Tusques made his contribution to the traditional music of a region he knows well: Brittany. With the electric bass of Tanguy Le Doré and the bombards and bagpipes of Jean-Louis Le Vallegant, Gaby Kerdoncuff and Philippe Lestrat, the Intercommunal becomes a kind of Brotherhood Of Breizh. But if the swell and the sway remind us of Chris McGregor, the repetitions and dissonances soon rock the boat. Bracing, the wind in Brittany!
If the jazz of François Tusques is “free”, his spirit is even more so: having recorded Free Jazz with other like-minded Frenchmen (Michel Portal, François Jeanneau, Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin and Charles Saudrais), the pianist had covered a lot of ground, with Barney Wilen (Le Nouveau Jazz) or even solo (Piano Dazibao and Dazibao N°2), so as not to repeat himself…
In 1971 he founded the Inter Communal Free Dance Music Orchestra which, as the notes the this album stated, “is an interpretation of a music which sythesizes the different communities living and working in France.” In 1976, on the first album (L’Inter Communal) we can already hear Tusques playing without borders in the company of Carlos Andreu (vocals), Michel Marre (trumpet and saxophone), Jo Maka (saxophone) and Ramadolf (trombone). It is a meeting between jazz and music from Catalonia, Occitanie and Africa. So far so good, but what about Brittany, that, Tusques knows “by heart”?
Having lived for a long time in Nantes, he would expand his ‘brittanitude’ on the canal linking the aforementioned city to Brest by playing with, for example the Diaouled-Ar-Menez. With these “devils from the mountain” who, under the baton of Yann Goasdoué, worked throughout the 1970s on the renewal of music from Brittany, Tusques met, notably, Tanguy Ledoré and invited him one day, with trois bombards and some bagpipes (Jean-Louis Le Vallegant, Gaby Kerdoncuff and Philippe Lestrat), to join the ranks of the Intercommunal. And so they set of towards a new music from Brittany, as the title states; Vers une Musique bretonne nouvelle!
With percussion from Samuel Ateba and Kilikus, the association launches the ‘bombardier’: the repetitions and dissonance of the different members all serve a common cause however: the dance, which is always the reason for the party. This sets a whole universe spinning, which can bring to mind Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood Of Breath (“La rencontre”) when not taking on board waltz, swing, blues and gavotta or even revealing mysteries like those of Gurdjieff (“Les racines de la montagne” or “Le cheval” sung by Andreu). Only one thing to say to this Brotherhood Of Breizh: Mersi!
Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force lick another deadly shot of tumbling, tucked-up senegalese mbalax, making their 1st outing of ’16 and a 3rd 12” together in this line-up since 2015.
We’re all over the sloshing Walo Walo Version something rotten. It’s an utter joy to reprogramme yourself to its tangled syncopation, picking out and anticipating particular patterns with uncertain limbs, revelling in its wickedly stumbling, uniquely resolved meter. If, like us you’re nuts for drums, that lone, hingeing clap will leave you equally rapt, and then there’s a locked groove…
Flip side is also amazing: Ndiguel Groove resets the rhythm to a loping, shoe-laces-tied sort of house bustle sprinkled with lissom guitar and suspended in Mark’s mixing trickery, before turning up a denser original mix of Walo Walo Rhythm riding that Prophet 5 bassline and talking drums ‘aaaard.
From the late 1960s until the early 1990s, a vibrant music scene in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu was teeming with pop and folk musicians exploring the boundaries of regional sensibilities. With influences spanning several genres of Somali traditional music, often meshed with Western pop, jazz and Middle-Eastern elements, a swirling diversity of sounds were being created, consumed, supported and encouraged.
Dur-Dur Band emerged during a time when Somalia’s distinctive contribution to the creative culture in the Horn of Africa was visible and abundant. Thousands of recordings made at the Somali National Theatre, Radio Mogadishu and other studios, were complemented by the nightclubs at Hotel Juba, Jazeera Hotel and Hotel al-Curuuba, creating a flourishing music scene.
Bands like Dur-Dur, Iftin, Shareero, on one hand, were inspired by everyone from Michael Jackson and Phil Collins to Bob Marley and Santana, as well as James Brown and American soul music. Equally active were groups performing regional folk musics and promoting the traditional side of Somali music. These groups helped develop a continuity with historical musical practices and oral literature that persist in popularity to this day. Seminal outfits like Waaberi and Horseed, in addition to a litany of celebrated qaraami musicians, generated a legacy of masterworks. These seasoned musicians’ efforts rippled through the music scene and spread to countries beyond as many artists began to emigrate when the country destabilized.
This recording, which was remastered from a cassette copy source, is a document of Dur-Dur Band after establishing itself as one of the most popular bands in Mogadishu. The challenge of locating a complete long-player from this era is evidenced by the fidelity of this recording. However, the complex, soulful music penetrates the hiss.
By 1987 Dur-Dur Band's line-up featured singers Sahra Abukar Dawo, Abdinur Adan Daljir, Mohamed Ahmed Qomal and Abdukadir Mayow Buunis, backed by Abukar Dahir Qasim (guitar), Yusuf Abdi Haji Aleevi (guitar), Ali Dhere (trumpet), Muse Mohamed Araci (saxophone), Abdul Dhegey (saxophone), Eise Dahir Qasim (keyboard), Mohamed Ali Mohamed (bass), Adan Mohamed Ali Handal (drums), Ooyaaye Eise and Ali Bisha (congas) and Mohamed Karma, Dahir Yaree and Murjaan Ramandan (backing vocals). Dur-Dur Band managed to release almost a dozen recordings before emigrating to Ethiopia, Djibouti and America.
Dur-Dur Band was considered a “private band,” not beholden to government pressure to sing about political topics. They practiced a love- and culture-oriented lyricism. Government-sponsored bands like those of the military and the police forces, as well as many of the well-known folk musicians, made songs that were chiefly political or patriotic in nature.
In a country that has been disrupted by civil war, heated clan divisions and security concerns, music and the arts has suffered from stagnation in recent years. Many of the best-known musicians left the country. Music became nearly outlawed in Mogadishu in 2010. Incidentally, more than ten years after Volume 5 (1987) was recorded at Radio Mogadishu, the state-run broadcaster was the only station in Somalia to resist the ban on music briefly enacted by Al-Shabab.
Dur-Dur Band is a powerful and illustrative lens through which to appreciate a facet of the incredible sounds in Somalia before the country's stability took a turn. But Somali music of all kinds continues to thrive thanks in part to the diaspora living in cities worldwide. An extensive network of news, music and video websites, along with dozens of voluminous YouTube channels, makes clear an exciting relentlessness among artists. Reports of musicians returning to Mogadishu from years abroad bodes well for the immediate future of music and expression in Somalia.
Glass Beams have announced their highly anticipated EP ‘Mahal’, out on March 22nd on their new label home Ninja Tune. Released alongside the news is the EP’s titular track “Mahal”.
The genesis for the Melbourne-based trio, which formed around founding member Rajan Silva, was through the rekindling of childhood memories relating to his father, who emigrated to Melbourne from India in the late 1970's. Silva recalled watching a DVD on repeat with his father; ‘Concert for George’, a star-studded tribute to late Beatles member George Harrison performed at London's Royal Albert Hall in 2002, featuring legendary Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar with daughter Anoushka, alongside Western icons Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney and ELO’s Jeff Lynne. This intersection of musical styles was reflected in the record collection of Silva's father, where the sounds of iconic Bollywood vocalists Asha Bhosle and the Mangeshkar lineage sat alongside music from blues legends like B.B. King and Muddy Waters. In particular, Silva was drawn to the fusion of Western musical styles and traditional Indian music; a concept pioneered by Indian artists like R.D. Burman, Ananda Shankar, and fraternal duo Kalyanji-Anandji.
This cross-pollination of East and West, of old and new, is a sentiment that the band have sought to capture in their self produced works. Across their output, Glass Beams presents a timeless fusion of cultures and sounds beamed through a prism of live instrumentation and DIY electronica, all wrapped up inside a mesmerizing and mystical visual world of their own making.
Their debut EP ‘Mirage’, released in 2021 catapulted them into the collective consciousness of new followers who came to discover their serpentine, psychedelic-tinged tracks through social media, streaming services and word of mouth, with the vinyl copies selling-out as quickly as it could be pressed via grassroots record store support.
In the wake of the unexpected success of their debut release and an abundance of festival invitations, Glass Beams were amplified around the globe performing hypnotic renditions of the 'Mirage' EP alongside an additional 20 minutes of unreleased music. Early clips of these “unreleased tracks” quickly began circulating online garnering millions of views and a fast-growing and ever-hungry following. As 2023 drew to a close and the dust settled after a whirlwind of touring, Glass Beams retreated to their home studio to record this much anticipated 20 minutes of music. They have named the record 'Mahal'.