Tony Allen Afrobeat 2000
N.E.P.A. (Never Expect Power Always)

This double LP release features one of Miles Davis’ final great bands: John Scofield on guitar, Bill “The Other Bill Evans” Evans on saxophones, flute and electric piano, Darryl Jones on bass, Al Foster on drums, and percussionist Mino Cinelu. Miles was back in amazing form (“incandescent and iridescent as ever,” critic Greg Tate noted), when he mounted the stage at the Theatre St-Denis during the Festival International De Jazz De Montreal in July 1983, and this revelatory performance has been lovingly mixed and mastered for its first ever release, on vinyl for Record Store Day 2022. (A CD will be part of the next edition of the Miles Davis Bootleg Series, focusing on the 1981-1985 period, later in the year.)What It Is includes tracks from that year’s release Star People, the Marcus Miller tune “Hopscotch” and the song “Jean-Pierre” that appeared on 1982’s We Want Miles. The recordings of “What It Is” and “That’s What Happened” were so well thought of by Miles that he utilized them for his 1984 release Decoy, but in heavily edited form and this release would include the first release of them in complete form. Packaged in beautiful gatefold packaging, the album features liner notes penned by the incomparable music journalist Greg Tate and represent some of his final writing.

Raï is the music of a youth hungover from Algeria's recent independence. It became a space for a liberated, transgressive dialogue that told the social truths of its time -- an up-front yet poetic voice that covers the taboos and frustrations of daily life, expressing emotion without detour. This voice is heard at weddings, cabarets, in the nightclubs of the Oranese coast, and casually on the street... With the boom of the audio cassette, an avalanche of raï tapes were produced in Oran and diffused all over the world. Both women and men sang and listened to the new sound, as raï is intimately tied to parties, alcohol and the night. With the spontaneous improvisation of its singers as the main part of each song, raï keeps reinventing itself. In this style, Cheb Hasni, along with Cheb Nasro, incarnates a second generation of musicians. With the "love raï", or sentimental raï, Hasni sings about love, passion and its setbacks -- moving away from the bittersweet daily chronicles of the first chebs and chebates. Having recorded nearly 150 cassettes, Cheb Hasni remains one of the most prolific and talented raï singers of his generation. Almost thirty years after his death, this three-volume compilation of rare tracks from his cassette releases on the Oriental Music Production label is a tribute to the lasting legacy of Cheb Hasni -- ya raï! The second volume of three is presented here.CHEB HASNIVol 2Outre National

After four technically and aesthetically impressive salvos of eclectic electronics, the 5-year anniversary compilation from Stroboscopic Artefacts reaches its terminus with this new release. Worrying about whether or not the series ‘goes out with a bang’ seems unnecessary, since the series has always felt pleasingly unconventional, and thus not too concerned with the conventional act of providing listeners with a grand finale. Simply put, this high-quality ‘retrospective’ series has been more about challenging the S.A. constellation of artists to forge new paths than it has been about nostalgically revisiting the past, and so it’s better to approach this last installment as a statement on the past informing the future. Donato Dozzy, Lucy, and the Sendai duo are the parties responsible for bringing us the final report of the series. Those already familiar with these artists’ past works for S.A. will understand immediately that these artists are not all cut from the same cloth, and those who didn’t know that will soon find out. As with the previous ‘anniversary’ records, the intent here is to synthesize significantly different sounds into a uniform or seamless listening experience, to the point where the record seems more like a genuine collaboration between the artists than a mere ‘sampler’ record offering eclecticism for its own sake. Donato Dozzy’s entry here is very much in keeping with the spirit of his S.A. release Terzo Giorno. It is as propulsive as any of the best techno music of past decades, exhibiting a marked indifference to the inessential and a knack for smashing together percussive atoms of a thick and bombastic quality. To do so without punishing speakers completely into submission or turning everything into a fatiguing mess is more difficult than it sounds, but Dozzy is certainly up to the task here.

Pour fêter les 15 ans du Label Chinese Man Records, le Groove Sessions Vol.3 se refait une beauté, avec une édition collector limitée : vinyles rouges, free download et quelques surprises visuelles cachées à l’intérieur par le truculent Julien « Ouikid » Loïs!

TBMO first revisited the works of elders Batsumi and Malombo whilst on tour in Europe during 2018 and 2019. In collaboration with Matsuli Music an idea was seeded to record these works specifically for a vinyl release.With these recordings, TBMO work to re-stitch a torn cloth. These songs are critical shards of a fractured sonic, social and political inheritance. They are the sound-work of the elders – Mongezi Feza, Johnny Dyani, the Malopoets, Batsumi, and Philip Tabane, and they come with a blessing from Moses Taiwa Molelekwa. Called into the circle for this session, they speak old wisdom in new voices, and what they have to give is not measured in distance from a so- called original version.TBMO is a South African performance art and music ensemble from Johannesburg formed in 2009 by brothers Nkululelo and Siyabonga Mthembu whilst watching an episode of the US TV-drama The Wire. The name is a misconfiguration of a fictional character, The Brother Mouzone, from The Wire. Since 2009 they have released two albums, A New Myth (2013) and The Golden Wake (2015).

Kalita are proud to unveil the first ever compilation focussing on the phenomenon of ‘Burger Highlife’, a crossover of West African melodies with synthesizers, disco and boogie that took over Ghanaian airwaves during the 1980’s and beyond. Highlighting key recordings from genre-defining artists including Thomas Frempong and George Darko, as well as more obscure sought-after tracks by elusive bands such as Aban and Uncle Joe’s Afri-Beat, Kalita come to the rescue of audiophiles, DJs and music-lovers alike with ‘Borga Revolution!’ Spread over a double-LP housed in a gatefold sleeve. Accompanied by a 16-page booklet featuring extensive interview-based liner notes on each artist and never-before-seen archival photos.The 1970s had witnessed an increased Western airtime and physical presence in Ghana introducing funk, soul and disco sounds to the region. By the turn of the decade the country was also enduring economic turmoil, with rising poverty, military dictatorships and long periods of enforced curfews (amongst other factors) making it impossible for artists to survive.As a result, many Ghanaian artists with a broader outlook began to pursue their careers in the West, moving to both Europe and America in search of stardom. It was here that Ghanaian musicians developed a digitised version of highlife music which fully embraced Western contemporary music styles and newly introduced technology such as the DX7 synthesizer and various drum machines.It is in this context in which the evolution of Ghanaian dance music and the emergence of ‘burger highlife’ was born. With ‘Borga Revolution!’ Kalita endeavour to tell this story, with prominent and lesser-known musicians’ accounts and documentary evidence providing a comprehensive understanding of this shift to the digital age.