Placenta is the fourth collection of broadly imaginative and highly collaborative Carlos Niño & Friends music released on International Anthem in the last four years. It is also the first new music to be released by Carlos Niño & Friends following the November 2023 release of André 3000’s New Blue Sun – an album which Carlos produced alongside André, while co-writing, co-creating/playing, and co-mixing every song. Learn More
Moritz’s deep Berlin steppers discloses dubwise traces of our original Lagos recording — the percussion of Yinka Ogunye, the singing of fifties palmwine legend Rolling Dollar, Oscar Olimbi’s guitar lick — in with his own warm Oberheim voicings, additional drumming, and cool-and-deadly rhythm track. It’s a tough, masterly dance record in fine Rhythm And Sound style (evoking vintage House, too) — which during its ten-and-a-half minutes seems to ponder time elapsed and journeys undertaken. Like a stepping razor, but t-u-m-p-i-n. Learn More
To celebrate 3 years since the release of Andrew Ashong & Kaidi Tatham’s now classic Sankofa Season, Kitto Records invite some of their favourite artists to remix and reimagine the music. The result is an all-star line up that crosses genre and generations to produce a truly cracking EP, one that is clearly rooted in the original music while also moving into new, unexpected territories. Whether it is dubstep pioneer Mala bringing a heavy and sophisticated twist to ‘Low Ceilings’, or breakthrough post-punk artist Wu-Lu flipping ‘Washed in You’ into a completely new realm, complete with a captivating feature from the one and only Lex Learn More
Khadim is a stunning reconfiguration of the Ndagga Rhythm Force sound. The instrumentation is radically pared down. The guitar is gone; the concatenation of sabars; the drum-kit. Each of the four tracks hones in on just one or two drummers; otherwise the sole recorded element is the singing; everything else is programmed. Synths are dialogically locked into the drumming. Tellingly, Ernestus has reached for his beloved Prophet-5, a signature go-to since Basic Channel days, thirty years ago. Texturally, the sound is more dubwise; prickling with effects. There is a new spaciousness, announced at the start by the ambient sounds of Dakar street-life. At the microphone, Mbene Diatta Seck revels in this new openness: mbalax diva, she feelingly turns each of the four songs into a discrete dramatic episode, using different sets of rhetorical techniques. The music throughout is taut, grooving, complex, like before; but more volatile, intuitive and reaching, with turbulent emotional and spiritual expressivity.
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Àṣẹ – a Yaruba philosophy signifying the power that makes things happen and produce change; given to Gods, ancestors, spirits, humans, animals, plants, rocks, rivers, songs and prayers. BOM takes influence from all the corners of Africa and its diaspora, blending with 25 years of Western electronic music into a melange of forward facing, leftfield afro futurism. Àṣẹ features one of Africa’s brightest rising stars Luka Productions (Mali), cosmic poet Sirius Rush (UK) and master drummer / vocalist Felix Ngindu (DRC/Liverpool). It goes on a journey where afrotech, gqom, shangaan electro and ampiano rub shoulders with Balearic, bass music, deep house and dub for a psychedelic kaleidoscopic celebration of collaboration and possibility. Learn More
Not a nowadays-style remix, more an extended mix in the classical tradition headed by Tom Moulton, back in the days when Francois Kevorkian was his teaboy, and there was a cupboard in his office stuffed with Studio One master-tapes. This record brings to Afrobeat the dubwise intelligence of the discomix. It’s beautifully crafted, irresistibly grooving, heavy. Learn More