Sudan Archives steht für diverse Stile, eine packende Mischung aus kraftvollem, hymnenhaftem R&B und elektronischer Musik. Ihr Violinspiel ist beeinflusst von Nordostafrikanischer Geigenmusik, aber auch Westafrikanische Rhythmen finden den Weg in ihre Musik.Für Athena hat sie mit einer Vielzahl von Songwritern, Produzenten und Musikern zusammengearbeitet. Die Stücke auf dem Album klingen voller denn je, Sudan Archives bleibt sich und ihrem einzigartigen Stilmix aber treu, der ihr so viele Fans auf der ganzen Welt eingebracht hat.
Zu sehen: Eine Bronzestatue von Sudan Archives.
DL+Booklet
Less than a hundred miles inland from the capital city of Lima lies the
great Peruvian jungle, an untamed land of impenetrable forests and
endless winding rivers. In its isolated cities, cut off from the
fashions of the capital, a unique style of music began to develop,
inspired equally by the sounds of the surrounding forests, the roll of
the mighty Amazon and Ucayali Rivers, and the rhythms of cumbia picked
up from distant stations on transistor radios. With the arrival of
electricity, a new generation of young musicians started plugging in
their guitars and trading in their accordions for synthesizers:
Amazonian cumbia was born.Powered by fast-paced timbale rhythms,
driven by spidery, treble-damaged guitar lines, and drenched in bright
splashes of organ, Amazonian cumbia was like a hyperactive distant
cousin of surf music crossed with an all-night dance party in the heart
of the forest. While many of the genre’s greatest tracks were
instrumental, and others were simple celebrations of life in the jungle,
the goal of every song was to keep the party going.Radio stations in Lima remained unaware of the new electric sounds emanating from the jungle, but a handful of pioneeringrecord producers ventured over the mountain passes to the cities of Tarapoto, Moyobamba, Pucallpa – even Iquitos, a cityreachable only by boat or plane – and lured dozens of bands to the recording studios of the capital to lay down their besttracks. Although many became local hits, few were ever heard outside the Amazonian region … until now.With eighteen tracks from some of the greatest names in Amazonian cumbia, Perú Selvatico is both the improbable soundtrackto a beach party on a banks of the Amazon and a psychedelic safari into the sylvan mysteries of the Peruvian jungle.
'Kel Tinariwen' ist eine aufschlussreiche Entdeckung aus den
Tinariwen-Archiven, eine MC mit frühen Aufnahmen der legendären
Tuareq-Band, die 1992 nur innerhalb ihrer Sahara-Stammesgebiete erschien
und jetzt erstmals die offizielle Veröffentlichung erlebt. 'Kel
Tinariwen' hat noch nicht den vollen Bandsound entwickelt, mit dem sich
Tinariwen international etablierten, und erweitert die reiche Geschichte
der Band um eine weitere Epoche. Ihr Markenzeichen sind die
hypnotischen Gitarrenlinien und der Call-and-Response-Gesang, die sich
zwischen rauen Drum-Machine-Rhythmen und Keyboard-Melodien verweben und
fast an eine arabische Version von 80er Synth-Pop erinnern. Es gibt
deutliche Parallelen zwischen den Klängen auf diesem Band und der
Arbeit, die in den letzten Jahren von Cratedigger-Labels wie Awesome
Tapes From Africa, Sahel Sounds und Sublime Frequencies entdeckt wurde.
Dick Essilfie-Bondzie was all ready for his 90th birthday party when the Covid pandemic hit. The legendary producer, businessman and founder of Ghana’s mighty Essiebons label had invited all his family and friends to the event and it was the disappointment at having to postpone that prompted Analog Africa founder Samy Ben Redjeb to propose a new compilation celebrating his contributions to the world of West African music.
For most of the 1970s Essilfie-Bondzie’s Dix and Essiebons labels were synonymous with the best in modern highlife, and his roster was a who’s-who of highlife legends. C.K. Mann, Gyedu Blay Ambolley, Kofi Papa Yankson, Ernest Honny, Rob ‘Roy’ Raindorf and Ebo Taylor all released some of their greatest music under the Essiebons banner.
Yet Essilfie-Bondzie had been destined for a very different career. Born in Apam and raised in Accra, he was sent to business school in London at the age of 20, and returned to the security of a government job in Ghana. But his passion for music, inspired by the sounds of Accra’s highlife scene, had never left him, and in 1967 he figured out a way of combining music and business by opening West Africa’s first record pressing plant.
The venture, a partnership with the Philips label, was a huge success, attracting business from all over the continent. By the early 1970s Essilfie-Bondzie had left his government job to concentrate on his labels, and by the mid-seventies he was on a hot streak injecting album after album of restless highlife into the bloodstream of the Ghanaian music scene.
Essiebons Special features a selection of obscure workouts from some of the label’s heaviest hitters. But in the course of digitising his vast archive of master tapes, Essilfie-Bondzie found a number of Afrobeat and Instrumental maszterpieces tracks from the label’s mid-70s golden age that, for one reason or another, had never been released. Those songs are included here for the first time.
Sadly Essilfie-Bondzie passed away before the compilation was finished. But his legacy lives on in the extraordinary music that he gave to the world in his lifetime.
Download for LP from Bandcamp also includes unlimited streaming of *Essiebons Special 1973 - 1984 - Ghana Music Power House* via the free Bandcamp app along with high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more
Double LP pressed on 140g virgin vinyl comes with a full color 12-pages booklet