The exhilirating Malawian duo Madalitso Band are back with their third album for Bongo Joe and thankfully, it is more of the same of their big-voiced, irresistible dancing joy. As they stride through their European and UK tour, here are eight new songs to lift the soul and move the body to. With a punchy, festival-ready production and a few guests along for the ride, these guys exemplify positivity and resilience through tough times. Read / Listen.
Recorded live on December 22, 1982, at the Théâtre La Criée in Marseille, this previously unreleased recording sees the ‘Lion of Cameroon’, Manu Dibango at the height of his considerable powers as he and his brilliant eight-piece band roar through a blistering set that showcases his world-beating blend of Cameroonian makossa, Congolese rumba and jazz-funk-fusion. Beautifully captured (and remastered from the original tapes), this is an amazing find from the always exceptional WEWANTSOUNDS label. Read / Listen.
Released in January, Lophae’s ‘Perfect Strangers’ is a brilliantly realised recording of four exceptionally talented musicians locked into one studio room as they improvise and explore bandleader and guitarist Greg Sanders’ beautifully melodic compositions. With the quartet filled out with Ben Brown (Waaju, Mulatu), Tom Herbert (Polar Bear, Acoustic Ladyland) and the gorgeous tenor sax playing of Sam Rapley, the album’s Brazilian, West African and classic jazz stylings are elevated to something extra special. One of the best records of the year no doubt. Read / Listen.
The ridiculously prolific Munich outfit Web Web return to Compost Records with yet another album but this time around, they’ve enlisted the fuzz guitar heroics of JJ Whitefield, ensuring that their hybrid collage of krautrock and revolutionary era jazz has an even more pronounced psychedelic edge. It absolutely works. Read / Listen.
On his seventeenth album, the French dub pioneer Brain Damage has assembled together the Japanese experimentalist Emiko Ota and the British dub-eccentric Mad Professor and made a brilliantly strange record of what he calls ‘Post-Dub’. It is, however, so much more than that title suggests. Each track is named after one of the many mysterious spirits unique to the Japanese imagination - the yōkai - and each song takes on the unfathomable characteristics of these creatures, be they malevolent or benevolent to us mortals. Musically, the album swings from post-punk edge to cavernous digi-dub to curious theatrical vignettes, always with this sense of esoteric wonder. Read / Listen.
Always a thrill to premiere a new track to the world and this fizzing, jazzy krautrocker from the Munich-based jazz outfit Web Web certainly deserves highlighting. From their forthcoming sixth album ‘Plexus Plexus’, special guest JJ Whitefield (The Poets Of Rhythm / Karl Hector & The Malcouns / Syrup) lays down his fuzzed-up guitar line all over ‘Apotheosis’, the end result resembling a focussed mash up of cosmic Neu!, Os Mutantes and the electric Miles Davis energy that permeates the rest of the album. Listen here…
Check out this brand new video revealing the new project from the UK deep house legend Charles Webster and his collaboration with South African artist Muzi. Intimately recorded, we see the process behind their single 'Bakulindele', as good an example of contemporary SA house music as you will find. The single is released today on Kid Fonque’s awesome Stay True Sounds label and it promises much for the album to come! Watch / Read / Listen.
Raúl Monsalve y Los Forajidos return to Olindo Records with an explosive blend of indigenous Afro-Venezuelan rhythms, muscular spiritual jazz, future-funk, afrobeat and psychedelia on their new album ‘SOL’, an already singular band stretching themselves into masterpiece territory. With a distinctly different rhythmic heritage to many other Caribbean and Latin American countries, Raúl’s ethnomusicologist ear is as important as his brilliance as a composer and multi-instrumentalist. Inviting a top tier list of guests that includes Nick ‘Emanative’ Woodmansey, the great Congolese guitarist Kiala Nzavotunga, Tony Allen’s last musical director Yann Jankielewicz and Heliocentrics’ Malcolm Catto to collaborate with his multinational outfit, they manage to convey the complex heritage of Venezuela’s coastal regions with a contemporary, well-travelled energy. A mix of original songs are joined by startlingly new interpretations of numbers by Fela Kuti and John Coltrane, their ambition matched by their talents. Read / Listen.
Is it Spring yet? As usual, a diverse selection this month but I suppose the one thing they all have in common is their fusion of ideas and cultures, a fluidity of influences that creates something new and fresh. Music from Unknown Mortal Orchestra, ESINAM & Sibusile Xaba, Nadeem Din-Gabisi, Céline Dessberg, Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly, João Leão and Joe Armon-Jones. Enjoy!
Who doesn’t love a great compilation? A smartly curated collection of songs from a specific era/country/genre/artist/record label becomes a gateway to a new way of hearing the world. As a kid, it’s the cheapest way to learn and build up your collection, and in some cases, compilations become classic releases in their own right. 2025 is heating up with some incredible compilations so here’s a bunch well worth getting your hands on!