Rare 45s by these standard-bearers of the funky, counter-cultural heavy rock-scene in mid-seventies Rhodesia. Watch Out was its anthem.

Saboso from mid-seventies Dar Es Salaam. Complex, fluid guitars and congas; pithy songs.

Discos Fuentes fire, rare as hens’ teeth, from 1975.
La Torta is first out of the oven, with a Colombian take on Haitian compas which was soundsystem murder, back in the day. The wild Fiebre De Lepra was the 45 — funky wah-wah guitar, makossa-style bass, manic organ, and feverishly insane vocals by Wilson ‘Saoko’ Manyoma and Joe Arroyo — backed with the heavy, strutting El Caterete, based on the 1970 Brazilian recording by Marku Ribas. The off-kilter funk and stomping breaks of Tifit Hayed have created a tropical dance floor favourite in recent years, boasting a massive Latin bass line, tasty Farfisa organ stabs, a bluesy, jazzy piano solo, propulsive cowbell, and daft animal noises.

Precious witness to the dying musical traditions of Ladakh, high in the Western Himalayas, for centuries a hub of the Silk Road to India, Tibet, and Kashmir.

Inspired, free, luminous music-making. An outernational holy grail and a stiff tonic for all citizens of nowhere.
Already the great French jazz saxophonist had made monumental records alongside all-time legends like Monk, Blakey, Bud Powell and Miles — that’s Wilen on Lift To The Scaffold — before cutting loose at the end of the sixties on a two-year journey through Morocco, Algeria, Niger, Mali, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) and Senegal, with a team of film-makers, technicians and musicians. 
Moshi means trance utterance — the moshi is a demon invoked by the Fulani Borogi of Niger, to chase away angst and depression — and this is a shamanistic bricolage of smoky musical spells and scraps of intimate, outdoors ambience, full of love, good vibes and gritty musical wonder, drawn from more than fifty tape reels recorded en route: desert blues, space-jazz, street-funk, acid rock, polyphonic rhythms and new-thing influences like Shepp and Sanders; buzzing, extended ensemble sessions, like alternative Bitches Brews, crossed with diverse snippets of magic grabbed on the wing, like Algerian gnawa, or solo mbira, or just people laughing together, or a Bamako griot… 
Beautifully presented, with a twenty-page booklet, and the DVD of Caroline de Bendern’s vivid, freewheeling film A L’Intention De Mlle Issoufou A Bilma, about the trip.
Fervently recommended.

Essential Afrika 70 recordings, produced by Fela Kuti.

Summery, joyous, experimental pop; full of musical surprises and emotional twists and turns. The lush brass and woodwind arrangements are guided by Antonio Neves. Classic songwriting and cutting edge production, lit up by the beauty and chaos of Rio, and its sounds and rhythms; inspired by the pioneers of Música Popular Brasileira.

The best Awesome Tapes for ages!
The mighty, game-changing, iconic Asnakech in narcotic, bare-bones performances from 1975. Her singing and virtuosic krar-playing are intensely gripping throughout, accompanied by Hailu Mergia’s cosmic, zonked organ, and Temare Harege’s ultra-minimal brush-work and foot-pedal, like a barely audible drum-machine.
Haunting, intoxicating, wonderful stuff.

Pipa master Wu Man and her Uyghur, Tajik, and Hui collaborators explore connections between the musical worlds of China and Central Asia.

Classical themes of courtly love, nostalgia, absence, from sublime fourteenth-century texts, done the old-fashioned way, with fine qanbus (Yemenite, not Oriental lute), and copper plate percussion.

The out-of-this world, near-extinct tones and effects of copper plate, balanced on either thumb, with left-hand fingers playing ornamentally, the melody with the right, as accompaniment to singing in the Sanaan style, setting courtly poetry in classical Arabic.

Warm, nostalgic, stirring settings for voice, guitar, accordion and violin. Knowing nothing, we can hear Jacques Brel and Jake Thackray.

The multi-faceted genius of Eugene ‘Yonachak’ Cline, producer, multi-instrumentalist and singer from St Lucia, beautifully presented by Hornin’, with top-notch, live-and-kicking sound, in a gorgeous sleeve.
It’s a gripping, crazy mix. Deep, mid-seventies roots, Half Moon style, extended, with an instrumental, and ace dubs; nuts but banging late-eighties digi; off-the-wall rasta-soca fire.
Great stuff.