Michot Dhin
Super Nanga Boko

Monophonics cordially invite you to attend the grand re-opening of the once thriving, once vibrant establishment, the legendary Sage Motel. A place where folks experience the highs and lows of human existence. A place where big dreams and broken hearts live, where people arrive at without ever knowing how they got there. It's where folks find themselves at a crossroads in life. So join us as we examine where the stories are told and experiences unfold.....and sink into a soft pillow of soulful psychedelia.....down at the Sage Motel.

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Sababa 5 are back once again on our exclusive Middle Eastern Grooves series with another double-sided 7” titled ‘Forgive - Прости (Prosti)’: a funky release featuring the voice and lyrics of Anton Koliadko.Limited to 300 copies

Slipping through the cracks of infinite timelines, Man from the Future just can't put his past behind him. His journey can be filed as a score for breaking the space-time continuum as written by the Polyrhythmics releasing their sixth full-length studio release coming out on Color Red on May 8, 2020. Continuing the band’s exploration across genre and stylistic lines, Man from the Future documents them at their most evocative and cinematic yet.Spurring particles from their previous LP Caldera, Man from the Future rises out of the ravine to tell a tale that paints vivid stories that bridge the gap between the past, present, and future tying them together on one plane. That imagery alone plays into the writing process behind the album. Reflecting Caldera, there is music featuring and authored by each member of the band on this record. With tunes penned by each of the eight members of the ensemble, each paints their own account with the Man from the Future and etches their mark in the continuum. Also much like Caldera, the music for Man from the Future was composed at a mountain retreat, this time in the Mysty Mountain Properties alongside the Skykomish River in Barring, WA. During their stay at this ranch compound, the band got snowed in, hunkered down, and spent the 72 hours running grooves and melding ideas together. “Time was not an issue,” explains drummer Grant Schroff.From workshopping grooves in the mountains came months of road-testing songs that would see the group refining their deepest vibes and heaviest grooves to date. Man from the Future is a collection of songs that transcend your typical head-solo-head format. A collection of songs that serves as a fresh palate for every member to fulfill both rhythmic and melodic roles. And a collection of songs that can conjure an abundance of imagery and emotions without saying a word. “People want to search for a mood rather than an artist when they’re listening to music these days,” says percussionist Karl Olson, “We’re creating a vibe that happens within a song and it happens at several points across this album. A lot of people will want to listen if they know that they can evoke a mood out of this music.”Man from the Future is a “track-to-track musical landscape,” continues saxophonist and flautist Art Brown. “Yeti Set Go” sets the stage for Man of the Future’s quest through the space-time continuum with a Daktaris meets Roy Ayers soundscape. “Digital Cowboy” is poignant and calculated beckoning the future with synthesizers exploring modern sounds and fusion-based modalities. Fast forward to “In the Trees” and you find the band pulling influence from Italo Calvino’s 1956 novel The Baron in the Trees to create a stripped-down spaghetti western tune that stirs up a pensive sound palate. The scaled-back instrumentation features guitar, bass, an old Italian Vox Continental, light percussion and synthesizers and is unlike any tune the band has released prior. “We are able to take much bolder steps in composition and production style to create distinct feelings,” explains Olson. “Chelada” is a spicy melange of flavors where the band veers away from traditional compositional tactics. The rhythm section is at the forefront and the horns are in the background. The melody is carried by Ben Bloom on guitar and Jason Gray on bass while backed by Scott Morning on muted trumpet and Art Brown on flute playing horn pads. The static grooves give headway the synthesizer and percussion to stretch out. The title track “Man from the Future” takes direct queues from Tower of Power’s “Man from the Past” and features Schroff’s linear-style drumming and funky pocket grooves tipping their hat to Herbie Hancock’s iconic fusion album Thrust.The biggest takeaway from Man from the Future is that this is an album that transcends any type of formula and creates vibe pockets. “It’s a live instrumental mixtape,” says trombonist Elijah Clark. “If you think about a DJ crafting a set, it’s more about crafting pockets of different vibes. There’s tension and release and it’s less about songs and more about a cinematic piece of music that has different movements,” Schroff elaborates.Now on their sixth album and tenth year performing, Polyrhythmics, take all sonic exploration experiences of past albums combined with mad scientist experiments testing the tunes on the road and roll them into the final product that is Man from the Future. “We learn so much about how to get the sounds we want—and we do this ourselves. Every record we make, we build off the experiences of the last record,” says Schroff. The album was recorded at Studio Aleph and engineered and mixed by the band’s bassist Jason Gray at Blue Mallard Studios. It was then mastered by Doug Krebs of Doug Krebs Mastering and will be released on Color Red, record label and music platform founded by Eddie Roberts of The New Mastersounds.

First Word Records is very proud to present a brand new full-length album from Kaidi Tatham. ‘It’s A World Before You’.Following on from two EPs released on First Word last year (‘Changing Times’ and ‘Hard Times’), Kaidi has delivered us thirteen tracks that deftly illustrate his various talents as a multi-instrumentalist.Kaidi is probably best known for his work with Bugz In The Attic, though his musical contributions over the years have also included Amy Winehouse, Slum Village, Mulatu Astatke, Soul II Soul, Moonchild, Leroy Burgess, Amp Fiddler, Chris Dave, Macy Gray, King Britt, DJ Spinna, Mr Scruff and IG Culture to name but a few! In recent times, he’s worked with DJ Jazzy Jeff on a variety of projects, including his most recent album ‘M3’, touring Europe for Jeff and Will Smith’s reunion shows, and on the PLAYlist album 'Chasing Goosebumps', with Glenn Lewis, Stro Elliot (The Roots), Masego, Maimouna Youssef, Rich Medina, Daniel Crawford and more.All this in addition to heating up dances around Europe with his inimitable DJ sets, and working heavily with First Word label-mate, Eric Lau (who also mixed this album) on a variety of projects, and adding releases to his already impressive catalogue on 2000 Black, Eglo and Theo Parrish's Sound Signature, with regular compadre, Dego (who features on the album’s title track).This album personifies Kaidi’s diverse palette of sounds – bar Eric & Dego’s features, every piece of music is played by himself. Largely flowing on a broken beat rhythm section, Kaidi effortlessly incorporates washes of afro, latin and funk throughout. From the harmonics of ‘Your Dream Don’t Mean A Thing’, to the breakneck funk of ‘Outta Audah’, each and every riddim exudes energy. But this isn’t simply a bruk record. The album is laced together with downtempo beats and future jazz interludes throughout, and some sweet synth boogie is never very far away, especially on the weighty vibes of ‘It’s About Who You Know’. To top it all off, there’s two delightful nuggets of hip hop soul - Mancunian label-mates, Children of Zeus, feature on the neo-soul vibes of ‘Out Here On My Own’, and there’s a feature from Amir Townes, better known as Uhmeer - an upcoming MC from Philadelphia, and son of one Jazzy Jeff Townes - who rides a sub-heavy, piano-led slice of boom bap, voicing an assortment of characters to tell the tale of ‘Cupid’.‘It’s A World Before You’ is set to cause serious damage to sound-systems over the Summer, and show and prove once again the skills of one of the UK’s best unsung musical talents, Kaidi Tatham.

Finally reissued ! Vibro Success Intercontinental Orchestra was an extraordinary group from the Central African Republic, founded by the sax player Rodolphe 'Beckers' Bekpa, also known as Master Békers, in the late 60's. The band achieved surprising domestic success after Beckers introduced the first drums to the Congolese Rumba rhythm. His innovation proved to be wildly popular so they were hired as the resident band of “ciel d’Afrique au Km5”, a night club in Bangui. The club was renowned as the temple of the Olympic Réal football team's fans and that visibility propelled them into becoming the official national orchestra.1970 marked beginning of the band's international fame . Their fame spread beyond national borders until they became so popular that invitations began to arrive from nearby countries like Cameroon and Chad, the former of which the band would then tour that same year. The success of their performances prompted a further tour in 1972. According to Rodolphe Bépka, the audience enthusiasm Vibro encountered was bewildering. "We filled the old military stadium in Yaoundé in 1970, in 1972 the new Amadou Haïdjo stadium ... We are running with great success in the cities.” Their popularity was also growing in Chad, where they would tour several times through the early and mid 70's.Towards the end of 1976, Vibro Success decided to take their music global and introduce Central African music to listeners worldwide. It worked. The turning point came in Nigeria. There the group achieved extraordinary success, with live performances followed by contracts with local labels like Scottie and Ben/Clover resulting in hit releases. Most of their LP's were originally released on this later label, Ben Limited, owned by Ben Okonkwo.Ben, also known as Clover Sounds, brought a great number of the biggest bands from the country to market, bands like The Apostles, Akwassa,The Doves, Aktion, The Visitors, Mansion, Folk 77 and many others. Nearly all those groups started their recording careers in the label's studios based in the commercial heart of Aba, Abia State, one of Southeastern Nigeria’s largest cities. Aba at that time was a flourishing city, an important crossroads of people and culture with an intensive and active and cutting edge live music and nightlife.But after that golden era the group began to lose its popularity. In the 1980's they returned to Bangui and resumed their old-time gigs in dance halls there - only to realize that their music didn't have the appeal it used to. Making matters worse, the domestic economic downturn accelerated, forcing the orchestra to slowly end its activities . Vibro Succès Intercontinental Orchestra disappeared at the end of the 80s and most of its members died in the 90s.We discovered this LP during our first trip to Nigeria in 2016. While traveling in the east to meet up with a musician, we stopped for a night in a village. As often happens in Nigeria, information has a way of traveling fast. The news that a couple of white guys looking for records had arrived in the village the day before spread like light. When we awoke, we found a couple of elderly music lovers in the hall of our hotel with a little pile of records for sale. The nice cover of the “Drunkard” album was right on top!At first we thought it was just another really good soukous album made by Vibro Success but after we heard “Drunkard” - we knew we had stumbled onto something very special. That was the “easy” part. Soon after, we had the idea of reissuing this LP and that was a bit harder. There were no credits on the cover and not much information about Vibro Succès. We started to ask to our friends to ask around, see if somebody knew them or the producer. That's when sadly we discovered that Ben Okonkwo had passed. So with no leads to follow and seemingly without any possibility of making progress on the matter, we "gave up" and returned to Italy.A couple years later, in the summer of 2019, we found ourselves again in Aba. This time we had the chance to meet Nnamdi Okonkwo, the eldest son of the late Ben Okonkwo. After Nnamdi's mother and family agreed, he was glad to cooperate with us for the re-release of this special album.One of the foundational beliefs of Dig This Way Records is to work hard and try to do everything possible to bring back this rare, unknown music to market, allow people to enjoy these beautiful, vibrant vibes!