Three killers heralding the latest phase of this dazzling expression of a dream Dakar-Berlin nexus. All instrumental — though the opener has snatches of singing — with the vocal versions held back for the album.
The music just gets deadlier and deadlier — harder-boiled and deeper; more focussed, confident and dubwise.
Evoking the ancient cultural legacy of the griots, ‘Walo Walo’ is also the name of the sabar rhythm underlying the opener, which features Ibou Mbaye’s percussive synth-work, Mangone Ndiaye Dieng’s kit-drumming, and Bada Seck’s rigorous jolts of lower-pitched Thiol drum. The ‘Groove’ version is tough as nails; well and truly gnarly.
A tribute to the Baye Fall leader, Ndiguel Groove is a sparse, mellow interpretation of the most traditional cut on the album, showcasing Assane Ndoye Cisse’s insinuating guitar lines, Laye Lo’s super-elasticated snare-drumming, and Bada Seck playing the khine drums associated with the Baye Fall. (Short and wide; lightweight but low-pitched.)
Pretty awesome.

Five years into the project, Yermande announced a thrilling new phase for this Dakar-Berlin collaboration; a giant step forward.
The group of players was boiled down to twelve for recordings, eight for shows; sessions in Dakar become steeply more focussed. ‘This time around I was better able to specify what I wanted right from the initial recording sessions in Dakar,’ says Ernestus; ‘and further in the production process I took more freedom in reducing and editing audio tracks, changing MIDI data, replacing synth sounds and introducing electronic drum samples.’
Right away you hear music-making which has come startlingly into its own. Rather than submitting to the routine, discrete gradations of recording, producing and mixing, the music is tangibly permeated with deadly intent from the off. Lethally it plays a coiled, clipped, percussive venom and thumping bass against the soaring, open-throated spirituality of Mbene Seck’s singing. Plainly expert, drilled and rooted, the drumming is unpredictable, exclamatory, zinging with life. Likewise the production: intuitive and fresh but utterly attentive; limber but hefty; vividly sculpted against a backdrop of cavernous silence.
Six chunks of stunning, next-level mbalax, then, funky as anything.

Whoa this record is totally killer.
Intensely concentrated, but with a fresh spontaneity; super-charged with expressivity.
The singing is riveting, diva-esque; the mbalax rhythms are dazzling.
At every turn there are sensational, thrilling injections of Basic Channel and Rhythm & Sound.
Hotly recommended; it’s a must.

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.
Not that Khadim represents any kind of break. Its transformativeness is rooted in the hundreds upon hundreds of hours the Rhythm Force has played together. Nearly a decade has passed since Yermande, the unit’s previous album. Every year throughout that period — barring lockdowns — the group has toured extensively, in Europe, the US, and Japan. With improvisation at the core of its music-making, each performance has been evolutionary, as it turns out heading towards Khadim. “I didn’t want to simply continue with the same formula,” says Ernestus. “I preferred to wait for a new approach. Playing live so many times, I wanted to capture some of the energy and freedom of those performances.” Though several members of the touring ensemble sit out this recording — sabar drummers, kit-drummer, synth-player — their presence abides in the structure and swing of the music here…

Marvellous Boy is the West African counterpart of the 1950s Soho scene of our series London Is The Place For Me. Calypso, highlife and jazz, brimming over with lust for life, topicality, and extravagant creativity.

Expertly natural recordings of an intimate concert in 1980.

Tearaway soca from the studio of Darryl Braxton, mixing it up with ragga and rave vibes.

‘Wildly adventurous music from Cairo. Hypnotic polyrhythms pulsate within a richly acoustic sound-world. Custom-made, microtonal guitars explore nuanced phrasings, and Louca’s languid interplay with violin, synthesizer, and other instruments creates passages of vivid beauty.
‘Featuring violinist Ayman Asfour, percussionist and drummer Khaled Yassine, double bassist Rosa Brunello, multi-instrumentalist Nancy Mounir (playing violin and theremin on El Taalab), and oud virtuoso Hazem Shaheen on Sahar, Fera is some of the most composed and thoughtfully-crafted music Louca has ever made, but of course it’s guided by the dynamic experimentation and collaborative spark that have become central to his work.’

Chocolate Mena leading three lineups — featuring Joe Henderson, Jerome Richardson, Alfredo Armenteros, and co — through Lalo Schifrin and Duke Pearson arrangements of core Latin and Jazz classics.

Rawly ethereal, other-worldly singing by members of hill tribes in China, Vietnam, and Laos.

Calling all Disco Freaks!

‘The great South African tenorist Mike Makhamalele was a graduate of the key early-seventies group The Drive (alongside Bheki Mseleku and Kaya Mahlangu); and a mainstay of the scene centred on the Pelican nightclub in Soweto. From 1975, he began to record under his own name, developing a sophisticated fusion sound in a musical lane which few of his contemporaries were travelling.
‘Always attuned to other global fashions in Black dance and pop music, under numerous studio aliases he cut 45rpm covers of Fela’s Shakara and the Sugar Hill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight; and in 1979 he entered the Gallo studios with producer Peter Ceronio to respond to the ascendant sound of disco. Named after a township dance craze, Kabuzela was the result: four extended tracks of bouncing, upful disco jazz. Perfectly calibrated for dancing, heavy on the bass and drums, the album is set off by a gleaming centre piece, Disco Freaks — a joyous paean to the weekend and true lost gem of global disco, perfect for the most discerning dancefloors.’

‘A disciple of mambo innovator Perez Prado, the Cuban-born Modesto Duran was a pivotal figure in Latin dance music’s transitionary mid-century period. His gentle slaps can be heard across dozens of 1950s mega-sellers, from Esquivel to Belafonte, Eartha Kitt to Lena Horne. On his 1960 solo debut, Duran gathers a who’s who of conga-men, including Mongo Santamaría, Willie Bobo, and Juan Cheda, delivering a cinematic and percussive melange of afro-cuban, cha cha, and exotic jazz styles.’

A Bengali-Italian collaboration — nurtured by Rimini’s Associazione Ardea, for refugees — psychedelically combining ancient folk and cosmic synth exotica.
Entrancing, fresh renditions of mystical Baul songs, with Md After accompanying himself on
harmonium and two headed pakhawaj drum, over Andrea Rusconi’s warm Crumar synth and veena string drones.
Check it out.