Seun Kuti set to release highly anticipated album Heavier Yet (Lays The Crownless Head), executive produced by Lenny Kravitz on October 4th.
Afrobeat virtuoso Seun Kuti is gearing up to unleash his latest musical masterpiece upon the world with the upcoming release of his album ‘Heavier Yet (Lays The Crownless Head)’ that will be set to make waves globally on October 4th via Milan independent label Record Kicks. Coming 6 years after the Grammy nominated album ‘Black times’, this album marks a pivotal moment in Seun Kuti’s illustrious career, showcasing his evolution as an artist and activist.
Executive produced by legendary musician Lenny Kravitz and Fela Kuti’s original engineer Sodi Marciszewer (artistic producer)…
Category: world
Laid down on a four-track recorder over two sessions at the Ras Hotel ballroom in Addis Ababa in 1976, Ibex Band’s Stereo Instrumental Music is a foundational, if little-heard, document of Ethiopian music. Led by guitarist Selam Woldemariam and bassist Giovanni Rico, the group — which would go on to become the Roha Band and back Ethiopian greats such as Mulatu Astake, Girma Beyene, and Mahmoud Ahmed — was aided by Swedish radio worker Karl-Gustav who was working for the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus at the time.
The title of the album’s opening track, ‘Kemd’layey’ translates to “harmony, agreement, and coming together.” That’s what this album does. It doesn’t shout – it gathers. Like breath…
Joku Raja Rakkaudesakin (‘Even Love Should Have Its Limits’) – a phrase the Finnish folk duo of violinist Kukka Lehto and keyboardist Tero Pennanen, aka Pauanne, took as their starting point to musically explore the meaning, history and boundaries of love, in all its shades from light to dark.
Featuring an impressive array of guest musicians, this album is far more robust and wide-ranging than you might expect, from the thumping folk rock of ‘Pelkkä Persevä Neitsyt’ to the beautifully orchestrated soundscape of ‘Älä Mene Heilani Heikolle Jäälle’. The wonderful ‘Karjala’ is a highlight – a rattling, delightfully off-kilter number which seemingly transitions from future-folk dance to shimmering vintage pop.
The Denmark-based Tunisian producer Ammar 808, aka Sofyann Ben Youssef, brings a deep fascination with texture to his work. It starts with the TR-808 bass synthesiser from which he takes his numero de plume — a deep, squelchy rumble that often serves as an unsteady foundation in his tracks.
His first solo album, Maghreb United, was a north Afrofuturist manifesto that brought gimbri, gasba and zokra to a science-fictional landscape. His second, Global Control/Invisible Invasion, was a Chennai-based dancefloor-infused take on The Mahabharata. Now, on Club Tounsi, his scope is surprisingly smaller. This is an explicitly Tunisian album, based around mezoued. This genre of village-folk-gone-urban became…
Singer Roxana Amed blends her sophisticated fusion jazz with Argentine rock traditions on 2025’s sonically engaging Todos los Fuegos.
A collaboration with Argentine pianist, arranger, and co-producer Leo Genovese, the album finds Amed reinterpreting songs by foundational figures of Argentine rock, including Charly García and Serú Girán, Soda Stereo, Luis Alberto Spinetta, Fito Páez, and Gustavo Cerati. These are songs that American audiences might not be as familiar with, but which helped to define the sound of rock en espanol in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.
Joining Amed and Genovese is an all-star ensemble, featuring saxophonist/clarinetist Mark Small, bassist Tim Lefebvre, and drummer Kenny Wollesen. Together, they dig into these lyrical…
…Born in Puerto Rico and now based in Los Angeles, producer Pachyman (also known as Pachy Garcia) doubtless understands the complexities of the Caribbean – and of dub, whose innovative anti-establishment histories he cites as informing many of his choices. He’s demonstrated that on each of his releases, but it’s on his new album, Another Place, that he makes some of his most interesting moves to date.
Even the simplest of his tracks here have enough layers and emotional textures to keep a firm grip. Opening single “Calor Ahora” and following track “In Love” use dub’s inherent soft glow to radiate melancholy from even the most minimal lyrics (“I’m in love again / Falling for a friend,” sings Garcia on the latter, a two-line story that…
A little over a year after she released Miss Colombia, Lido Pimienta became the first woman of color to compose a piece for the New York City Ballet: 2021’s sky to hold, which presented folk genres like dembow and vallenato on the City Ballet’s esteemed stage. But she had already been composing another orchestral work, one that took notes from a deep well of historical sources: 16th century Italian castrati singers; Czech composer Luboš Fišer; the Gregorian liturgical chant Lux Aeterna. Pimienta uses these inspirations to create La Belleza: an acoustic, liberatory record of personal homecoming and ancestral communion where rumbling timpani, portentous strings, and rising and falling woodwinds meet in conversation with claves, drums, and celestial dembow.
Let’s not beat around the bush: Camila Domínguez, aka Lila Tirando a Violeta, is one of the greats of modern electronic music. Her ability to traverse ambient, industrial, psychedelia, bass, and club music, as well as the various rhythms of her native Uruguay without ever tripping up on any one of them rates somewhere well beyond impressive. And though the dream-like, meandering nature of her early work, and the sheer volume of her output (20+ albums and EPs in the past decade) has made the world a little slow to catch on, she’s only gotten more confident with time — and Dream of Snakes is easily her hardest-hitting record yet.
Her last big release, 2023’s Accela for Hyperdub, was dense and jagged, full of swarms of microsound that could overwhelm you if you…
Kalita present the third volume in their ground- breaking ‘Borga Revolution!’ compilation series, exploring the revolutionary phenomenon of Burger Highlife. This unique style fused West African melodies with synthesizers, disco, and boogie, a sound that took Ghanaian airwaves by storm in the 1980s and beyond. With previous volumes receiving strong support by tastemakers such as Gilles Peterson, Antal, Tom Ravenscroft, and Hunee, Volume 3 takes a deeper dive than ever before into the world of Ghanaian digital dance music.
This volume features rare, sought-after tracks from artists including Obibini Takyi, Osei Banahene, and Okyerema Asante, as well as Burger Highlife trailblazers George Darko and Lee Dodou. Borga Revolution! Volume 3 offers a curated…
Norway-based Sudeshna Bhattacharya is one of very few female sarod players, having begun training aged just eight, initially with her father, and later with one of the biggest names among sarod maestros, Amjad Ali Khan. Unlike the sitar, the sarod, (descended from the Afghani rabab) is unfretted, hence more difficult to play but offering a greater flexibility in exploring the many microtonal nuances of Indian classical music.
On the album Mohini (feminine equivalent of the Hindu god Krishna), Bhattacharya, accompanied by tabla player Mosin Khan Kawa presents three ragas, starting with an exquisite ‘Bhimpalasi’, a hugely popular afternoon raga. She goes on to raga ‘Hamsadhwani’ which has its origins in South Indian (Carnatic) classical music.
Cabo Verde (Cape Verde) is one of the world’s youngest nations, coming into being in 1975 upon gaining independence from Portugal.
As one of its most prolific and celebrated musicians, Mário Lúcio here pays homage to his country’s first 50 years with an album reflecting its diverse range of influences, from West Africa, Portugal, the Caribbean and beyond.
1975 also saw a blossoming of new music in Cabo Verde: the release from suppression of dance styles such as the funaná, music arriving with soldiers returning from war in Angola, Congo and Guinea; and the adoption of electric guitars and keyboards. Lúcio brings back these musical memories by basing new compositions on the styles of that era and weaves in threads from…
In 1977, New York’s Fania All-Stars toured Japan and introduced salsa to the country. That performance directly informed the creation of Orquesta del Sol by percussionist, composer, and arranger Masahito “Pecker” Hashida. Motivated by the Fania tour, he formed Orquesta del Sol in early 1978. Among the first musicians he recruited was veteran jazz drummer Shuichi “Ponta” Murakami. His presence made it easier for Hashida to enlist other prominent players from Tokyo’s studio scene. Thanks to Ponta, the 18-piece ensemble scored a record deal with jazz label Discomate. They stayed together until 2002, releasing five albums. The band’s gigs and recordings influenced better-known acts Orquesta de la Cruz (still active, they include former…
The third album of throwback fusion and funky soul from Don Glori, 2025’s Paper Can’t Wrap Fire is a feel-good summer jazz album. The stage name of Australian-born, London-based bassist and multi-instrumentalist Gordon Li, Don Glori has carved out a niche on the international nu jazz scene with his evocative, vintage-inspired grooves. These are the kinds of organic, club-friendly tracks that artists like George Duke, Lonnie Liston-Smith, and George Benson pumped out in the ’70s and ’80s. As Don Glori, Li crafts his own infectious songs that build upon the warm, analog vibe of those original LPs, but with a freshness and immediacy that feels genuine.
While Glori impressively plays a plethora of instruments on his album, including bass,…
“Banjo, harp, drums…what the hell is that?” Those words, spoken by drummer Antonio Sanchez at a concert played by himself, banjoist Béla Fleck, and harpist Edmar Castañeda, the men who made BEATrio, this international group’s debut album. Fleck played with both men previously: He met the Mexican jazz drummer at a tribute to Hindustani percussionist Alla Rakha, and then they played together as a duo in Mexico opening for Dave Matthews. Fleck and the Colombian harpist played a duo in Riverside Park, and performed similarly at 2019’s Big Ears Festival.
After the jams with Sanchez offered real possibility, they reached out to Castañeda and formed a trio. The musicians wrote and improvised together, and in September 2024,…
Hajda Banda are one of the best traditional bands to have emerged in Poland in recent years. Led by Belarusian singer and violinist Daria Butskaya, they focus on the music of eastern Poland and the Polesia region of Belarus and Ukraine. Alongside powerful polyphonic vocals, there are violins, cymbały (cimbalom), accordion and frame drums, and they create a real village celebration. The ‘Hajda’ name comes from the same ‘brigand’ word as the Taraf de Haïdouks.
Their opening number, ‘Niepraudzivaya Kalina’, a Belarusian wedding song, is about a Viburnum tree saying it will never bloom, like a girl saying she’ll never marry. But then both the Viburnum blooms and the girl gets married. The second track, ‘Od Cymbalistów’, is super lively…
Links between Cuba and Mexico go back a long time: there is evidence of multiple prehistoric population movements.
On Ritual, Havana’s Rita Donte fuses traditional Cuban forms with the more relaxed, less brash spirit of her new homeland, Mexico, where certain older styles are preserved while being drastically transformed at home.
Sometimes sparse and transparent, as on the lively ‘Paseo de las Misiones’, and sometimes lushly romantic, as on the bolero ‘La Vida es Hermosa’. Ritual showcases Cuban music seen through a Mexican lens, with some unexpected echoes from the Spanish-speaking Jewish diaspora and ’80s Brazil (the carefully organised ‘Calle Libertad’, whose cheerful progress smuggles in…
In the mid-1980s, Jess Sah Bi and Peter One became unlikely folk heroes in Côte d’Ivoire. Their debut album, Our Garden Needs Its Flowers, fused traditional Ivorian sounds with American folk and country, weaving serene meditations on injustice, unity, and love. It was a quiet revolution, shaped as much by the harmonies of Simon & Garfunkel and the twang of Kenny Rogers as by the struggles of a postcolonial generation.
A few years later, Jess fell seriously ill with a mysterious disease that no doctor or traditional healer could cure; it was only after an Evangelical Christian revival prayed over him that he miraculously recovered. Jesus-Christ Ne Déçoit Pas, his first solo album, is a heartfelt thank-you to those who prayed for him—and above all, to God.
As a child, Enji would join her friends and family as they gathered around to sing. It was their way of unwinding after long days of work in Mongolia’s capital city of Ulaanbaatar. Despite hearing long song — the traditional Mongolian singing style with elongated syllables and circular breathing techniques — on a daily basis, she only started formally learning the style in adulthood. She took to it easily. “Surprisingly, my sound came within 14 days,” she said in a recent interview with The Guardian. “It was so natural.” She auditioned for a jazz education project in Mongolia funded by Germany’s Goethe-Institut with the intent to study piano, but the instructors saw her potential as a singer and encouraged her to hone her vocal skills instead. By the time she relocated…
Based in Spain with two Irishmen (frontman Garrett Wall and bassist Dave Mooney), an Englishman (trumpeter Howard Brown) and an American (Robbie K. Jones on cajon and banjo) and named for workers on the New York subway system, the quartet came together in 2006 since which time they’ve released eight albums of generally lively and upbeat songs built around the core instrumentation of acoustic guitar, electric bass, trumpet and cajon with smatterings of banjo, uke and mandolin. So Tracks Laid, Tracks Covered is a sort of taking stock retrospective and looking ahead, a double set that pulls together back catalogue material from their first six albums and numbers only previously released on EPs alongside new songs and a collection of covers…
Rizwan and Muazzam Ali Khan were never meant to be musicians. Although they are the nephews of the Qawwali great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, their father was keen for them to focus on their education. It was only when a local Sufi shrine in Lahore invited them to perform that he discovered that the boys had been winning singing competitions at school and regionally.
The brothers were then taken under the wing of their uncle. Like him, they made a mixture of traditional albums and collaborations with western producers and musicians — Jah Wobble adds dubby bass to 2001’s People’s Colony No 1, their most sonically innovative recording.
At the Feet of the Beloved sees the brothers return to Real World after several decades, and revives…