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.

"The first edition of the vinyl is limited to 550 copies and comes in a wild mix of colors and with an inlay with pictures and lyrics."

HQ-2020 release, comes with MP3 download code

In the same year, 1981, that Orchestra Baobab recorded their second album under the direction of budding young Senegalese producer, Ibrahima Sylla, the Japanese electronics company Sony, held a press conference in Vienna to announce their version of the Compact Disc. In attendance was Herbert von Karajan, conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic and the urban myth – albeit possibly true – that the maximum length of 74 minutes of music then available for a CD, was because this allowed the entire length of Karajan's recording of Beethoven's 9 th Symphony, to fit on one disc.Fast forward 12 years to London in 1993 and Sterns' release of Baobab's 'Bamba' CD which combined tracks from the two vinyl albums 'Mouhamadou Bamba' & 'Viva Bawobab S1/ Si Bou Odja', and Sterns had a problem. What tracks to keep, what to drop and once you'd decided that, how to fit them all onto a CD in under 74 minutes? The solution was to edit, primarily by fading early, one of the longest tracks of the selection.Accordingly the first track of this album, “Sibou Odia”, was reduced from 14'35” to 13'41” and, in most cases, none were the wiser as the suggestion to call the CD version an “Edit” had been dropped on the basis that nobody would believe a 13+ minutes track was an edit! Now of course, such restrictions don't exist and either via a repiication of its original format on vinyl, or through the digital medium, you can hear the full-length version as first intended.And it's fascinating, not just this track but the whole album. The band is young, energetic and confident of their abilities. In the 'missing' 66 seconds you hear them live, in the studio, working together to close what indeed was something of an epic performance. And it's not just the musicians who have greater confidence. The recording itself is more accomplished, better balanced. However effective the echoey ambiance of, for example, “Mouhamadou Bamba” was on the first album, you don't find the same tricks here. They're not needed. Instead the core unit of bass, drums and guitar, ably abetted by more percussion, a second guitar and on-the-button horns, provide a solid foundation from which the five vocalists and featured instrumentalists can launch and then soar. creditsreleased November 20, 2020

Re-Release der Original-Alben: 1 Fly Me To The Moon (1968) 2 My Prescription (1969) 3 The Womack "Live" (1970) 4 Communication (1971) 5 Understanding (1972) 6 Across 110th Street (1972) 7 Facts Of Life (1973) 8 Lookin' For A Love Again (1974) 9 I Don't Know What The World Is Coming To (1975) 10 Safety Zone (1975) 11 B.W. Goes C. And W. (1976) 12 Home Is Where The Heart Is (1976)

Double LP + Download CodeFirst time collection of Apala music released outside of Nigeria. Includes tracks in related styles, such as Waka, Sakara, Pakeke and Yoruba.

180g vinyl

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