Modern Nigerian music starts here.
‘*****’, Mojo; ‘these songs leap out of the past like madeleines soaked in palm wine’, The Observer; ‘impeccably curated and packaged’, The Wire.

Storming vintage boogie from the Afrodisia studio, loose and thunderous, with killer freaky effects and old-school rapping. You can hear Eno’s Edo roots in Papa French’s scorching horns chart. Leroy Burgess goes to Lagos…

Consummate Berlin dub science by the maestro.
Beautifully textured, shuffling Lagos funk, on home-made percussion… militant horns… and a walloping, filthy-stinking kick-drum like the bucking, hairy hind-most of the Devil himself.
The Dub is Warrior Charge, 2016.
What a record. Bim squared.

The bullion-clad masterpiece of these pioneers of Nigerian Funk and Afrobeat at their deepest and heaviest — tearing, wailing, mid-70s funk, heady with spirituality. Superbad from start to finish, no let-up.

A stupendous blend of scintillating highlife, smoking Fela and spaced-out, funkdafied Black Jazz, from 1975 — Mari Affiong Usuah from Oron town, by way of Calabar in southeastern Nigeria, fronting a knockout band led by Daniel ‘Satch’ Asuquo from the Atomic 8 (and formerly of Bobby Benson’s orchestra).
The Afrofunk cuts are especially killer — with James Brown just percolating through by the end — but it’s a stunning, magnificent album, through and through.
Beautifully sleeved, too, with excellent notes by Uchenna from Comb & Razor. ‘Gob, smacked,’ he recalls, of his first listen; ‘mind, blown’.

A landmark field recording, exquisitely done, ambient and intimate, with beautiful music, and documentation by Colin Turnbull. A hit with Peter Brook, anyway.

It says ‘Volume 1’ on the cover, and this debut is full of promise, but it’s a one-off, from Nigeria, 1973: African styles grooving together with Latin and Caribbean, US soul and funk, and psych rock.

Engaged and spiritual Yoruban blues-rock from Joni Haastrup’s band in 1974.

Amazing, psychedelic, engagé afro-disco from the same milieu as William Onyeabor, with Gaspar Lawal on percussion. Very warmly recommended.

Rugged songs with gurumi lute accompaniment to celebrate the opening of the bush, summon genies, honour animals and praise huntsmen.

Music for spirit possession ceremonies, performed on the goge, a bowed single-string spike-fiddle — a half-calabash covered in iguana skin, with a wooden neck, and a string made of bunched horsehair.