London crew formed in the late seventies by Gus Phillips from Sierra Leone and Dominican Sam Jones. Nurtured by Grove Music; same family tree as Aswad. Just around the corner from Honest Jon’s in Ladbroke Grove, guitarist Peter Harris went on to set up the Kickin label (which put out Shut Up And Dance, Aaron Carl and Blaze).

Heavy, heavy early-eighties roots, mixed by King Tubby.

His first album simply under his own name, from 2022. ‘In a quieter, more meditative space than the pulsing, driving material found in his other groups Sons of Kemet, The Comet Is Coming, Shabaka and The Ancestors.’

The recording debut of a collaboration between Jordan ‘Jordache’ Czamanski and Ilya Ziblat Shay. Three freestyling chunks of hallucinatory electronica and freaking jazz; plus a sublime remix by Parisian maestro I:Cube, with MT’s wild keyboard lines, distant bells and general insobriety threading a tactile, sunrise-friendly house groove. Tropical jazz-funk for the synthesizer generation. Call it Balearic and die.

The Nigerian percussionist together with US soul singer OC Tolbert, in 1982.
A grippingly odd couple of sides: Happiness is slow-burning gospel; Nwanne is terrific, stampeding Afro-disco, with popping bass, echoing shout-outs and drums on fire.

Aka SJOB Movement, spun out of Sonny Okosuns’ set-up: Samuel ‘Spark’ Abiloye, Johnnie Woode Olimah, Ehima ‘Blackie’ Ottah and Prince Bolarinwa Agba.
Militant funk, deep and rootsy.

Initially the Moonrakers, formed in Kanu in 1968, by Steve Black, Rocky Mustapha, Tony Nosika and Frank Martins. This is their swansong, a decade later: irie Afro-disco.