Smash hits by the greatest mbaqanga girl group in history.
‘With its pulsating rhythm, sunny guitar phrases and resonant close harmony, Umculo Kawupheli — the music never ends —  celebrates music as a source of joy and healing.’ As ripped off by Malcolm McLaren for Bow Wow and Duck Rock.
Handsomely presented, with original label artwork, in a printed sleeve, with new notes on the back.

Blue Mabone!

Like The Last Special, this was recorded at Johannesburg’s Video Sounds Studios in December 1974, in the depths of the apartheid era, by a twelve-piece touring band from California which immediately moved beyond the segregated hotels and ballrooms to build links with local South African players and audiences.
Featuring pianist Kirk ‘Habiba’ Lightsey, Rudolph Johnson from Black Jazz, and Billy Brooks, both records are superbly arranged slabs of peak 1970s funky big-band soul jazz, with tasteful Latin inflections and more than a nod to South Africa’s upful township jazz sound.

Try Hamba Samba!

Mostly unaccompanied singing; also with musical bows — just knockout, some of the most beautiful music there is —  flutes, and guitars and concertinas.

Swaying, haunting tangos from Turkey, from the twenties to the fifties, drenched in tears and booze, regret and recrimination.

A dazzling survey of the last, bohemian flowering of the so-called Golden Era of Ecuadorian musica national, before the oil boom and incoming musical styles — especially cumbia — swept away its achingly beautiful, phantasmagorical, utopian juggling of indigenous and mestizo traditions.
Forms like the tonada, albazo, danzante, yaravi, carnaval, and sanjuanito; the yumbo, with roots in pre-Incan ritual, and the pasillo, a take on the Viennese waltz, arriving through the Caribbean via Portugal and Spain.
Exhumations like the astoundingly out-there organist Lucho Munoz, from Panama, toying with the expressive and technical limits of his instrument; and our curtain-raiser Biluka, who travelled to Quito from Rio, naming his new band Los Canibales in honour of the late-twenties Cannibalist movement back home, dedicated to cannibalising other cultures in the fight against post-colonial, Eurocentric hegemony. He played the ficus leaf, hands-free, laying it on his tongue. One leaf was playable for ten hours. He spent long periods living on the street, in rags, when he wasn’t in the CAIFE studio recording his chamber jazz-from-space, with the swing, elegance and detail of Ellington’s small groups, crossed with the brassy energy of ska — try Cashari Shunguito — and an enthralling other-worldliness.
Utterly scintillating guitar-playing, prowling double bass, piercing dulzaina, wailing organ, rollicking gypsy violin, brass, accordion, harps, and flutes. Bangers to get drunk and dance to. Slow songs galore to drown your sorrows in, with wildly sentimental lyrics drawn from the Generacion Decapitada group of poets (who all killed themselves); expert heart-breakers, with the raw passion of the best rembetica, but reined in, like the best fado.
Fabulous music, like nothing else, exquisitely suffused with sadness and soul. Hotly recommended.

Sumptuously presented, in a gatefold sleeve and printed inners, with a full-size, full-colour booklet, with wonderful photos and excellent notes. Limpid sound, too, courtesy of original reels in Quito, and Abbey Road in London; pressed at Pallas.

Chicha is the late-sixties, in-thing scrambling of traditionally-demented cumbia dance music. Uncouth electric guitar and organ join the mix, with other electronic debauchery.

A fabulous survey of early Congolese recordings, 1948-1963.
We can’t recommend it strongly enough.

Classic early-eighties Nigerian disco, fronted by Ronnie Pearl from Aktion and Jake Sollo from the Funkees.

The forgotten music of the Austro-Hungarian diaspora in the mid-west of the United States. An Ian Nagoski compilation to inaugurate the label, with a cover by Eric from Mississippi Records.

Fired-up, originary African pop, conjuring the Congolese rumba from imported Latin 78s — with thumb pianos, kazoos, banjos, bottles, violins, and irresistible little songs about pimps, dope, clubbing, sex, death.

Scintillating, hard-grooving, vintage afro-funk from coastal Kenya, drawn from rare sevens and a privately pressed LP.
It opens and closes with killer forays into left-field disco, featuring limber percussion and delirious synths, and breakdowns set to liquify dancefloors. Uru Wamiel catches the double-dutch bus to Mombasa, whilst Ndogo Ndogo is irresistibly reminiscent of early eighties New York crossover funk like Monyaka, with clattering drums, rough rhythm guitar, party-down bass, burning horns and all-together-now singing.
Lovely music, beautifully presented in die-cut, silk-screened sleeves.

Profiling producer Theppabutr Satirodchompu — the first in a series of albums celebrating the key-players of modern molam music, from Northeast Thailand. Limited vinyl from Light In The Attic.

‘Following up This Is Frafra Power, from the same Top Link studio, this is the music you hear on the cell phones, car speakers and sound systems around Bongo and Bolgatanga, the major cities of Ghana’s Upper East region. A mix of local rhythms and melodies played on traditional instruments, combined with producer Francis Ayamga’s Fruity Loops madness and Cubase electro, topped with the rhymes of local youngsters.
‘Zologo means crazy in Fare Fare (also known as Frafra), the main language here. This is fierce, energetic, joyfully obstinate music; wonderfully bonkers.’

Virtuosic, sor-led molam music from Isan, the province bordering with Laos and Cambodia — sprightly melodies through haunting dirges, over woozy basslines, drones, clattering percussion.