Calling all HJ massive: here is a terrific, vivifying guide to your record collection, and a political kick up the bum. Within ten minutes of engaging with this book, you’ll sprout a fresh pair of ears and a fifth lobe, or your money back.
This is a riveting, bracingly militant account of the racist British policing of Black Atlantic musical culture, from slavery days bang up to date. Extended sections consider the suppression of African drumming and dancing; calypso, and reggae sound systems; rap and drill.
The writing is deep, wide-ranging and richly erudite, but accessible and unstuffy. Compellingly, Lambros takes it all personally, and crucially his book blazes with love for a bunch of our favourite music: a long, diverse playlist in the back ricochets from Count Ossie and Salah Ragab through to A Tribe Called Quest and 24-Carat Black.
It joyously celebrates Black music as a reparative safe space, but also a key to getting to grips with the world; a contagion of ‘creole planetarity’, in the words of Paul Gilroy’s foreword, ‘capable of facilitating and intensifying political mobilisation, collective refusal and acting in concert. It can do this because it has promoted and amplified meaningful, relational life amidst a general haemorrhaging of meaning…’
‘The healing force of the universe,’ in Albert Ayler’s phrase. ‘My sanctuary… my life,’ as Gary Bartz put it. ‘Songs in the key of life.’

Very warmly recommended.

Storming, stomping, insurgent Niney. Stunning record.

‘I think it was 1979, or 1978. That rhythm, I record it at Channel One, and take it to Perry. So when me go down there and record it with Perry, I would have to get it mixed down so it would fit Perry’s 4-track Teac. So this is where now I voice it, and Scratch mix it, mix the voice. Then we put back the rhythm on the thing, and go back down to Channel One, and then Ranking Barnabas mix it. So it’s really Scratch, Barnabas and Scientist work on that song. That’s why you hear Scientist develop the foot and all those… double drumming you see there. It was Sly, Sly was the one who play that drum. Sly, Fullwood, Tony Chin, Chinna, Bobby Ellis, Dizzy the guy that play Riot for Keith Hudson, and Tommy McCook.’

Live recordings made at Théâtre Dunois, Paris, in April, 1981.

‘One of the most innovative and ambitious albums ever made; a sonic masterpiece featuring over two hundred musicians, which expanded the limits of music and sound, channeling Ōhashi’s thinking about mankind’s relationship with nature, and fundamental questions of life, death and rebirth… Pipe organ synths made from sampled Tibetan horns sit alongside field recordings from Central African forests, Buddhist mantras circle dummy head microphones, Javanese Jegog percussion ensembles pulse like verdant ecosystems, and the acoustics of temples, caves and landscapes are conveyed in the mix. Weaving together culture, nature and technology, it is a record that vibrates with the polyphony of life on Earth… But Ecophony Rinne was not only musically innovative. Noticing the difference between vinyl and CD versions of the album where digital reproduction limited the sound, Ōhashi developed a theory of Hypersonic Effect, determining that ultra-high frequencies above 20khz can impact human perception even if they are inaudible. At once a physical and a psychological experience, to listen to Ecophony Rinne is to feel music differently.’

Ricardo Villalobos, Underground Resistance, Chez Damier and full crew sparking off the Arkestra LP Living Sky and a spoken-word album of Sun Ra’s poetry, My Words Are Music.

‘Dora’s signature, sublime, open-hearted refinement of modern classical, folk and ambient is at its most colourful and rhythmic in this suite of keyboard instrumentals; an aural mille-feuille, in dramatic contrast with her previous, melancholic vocal works.
‘Atmospheric drone miniatures underpin flowing, cyclical arpeggios, spiralling into an unpredictable dream space of melodic polyphony. Drawing on an essay by Hartmut Rosa, the music mulls over conceptions of the acceleration of time and the experience of alienation. It reveals the inescapable pulsation of time as at once mesmerizing and unsettling.’