The first 2026 release from Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad’s Jazz Is Dead label is a collaboration with legendary Brazilian singing/songwriting duo Antonio Carlos & Jocafi. The pair — both from Salvador, Bahia — have been working together since the late 1960s and have not only recorded their own hits but delivered them for dozens of other artists as well. This is the pair’s first new recording since the 1990s. Muhammad and Younge were in Brazil in 2022 when they were introduced to Antonio Carlos & Jocafi by Baiana System’s Beto Barreto. The men hit it off and made tentative plans to record together. In 2025 Antonio Carlos & Jocafi came to play the Jazz Is Dead club. Younge and Muhammad set them up in their studio with a hip band, and a backing…
Category: world
Kinshasa isn’t the kind of city that waits for you to be ready, the city just takes over your experience. It is a metropolis of staggering contradictions, where the ghosts of Belgian colonialism collide with the relentless, vibrating hustle of hyper-capitalism. To attempt to capture the essence of this place on tape seems like a fool’s errand, yet this is exactly what the Kinshasa-based street art collective KINACT have achieved with their debut LP, Kinshasa in Action. Founded in 2015 by Eddy Ekete, KinAct first made their name not on stage, but in the gutters, markets, and intersections of the Congolese capital. They transformed public spaces into living, breathing theatres of the absurd, constructing elaborate regalia from the city’s discarded detritus, bottles, wires, tires, and dismembered…
Since its inception in 2002, independent label Soundway Records has unearthed coveted musical gems from far-flung corners of the world, with foundations that are rooted in meticulously sourced reissues. A collection of fourteen digital reggae, deep roots and dub rarities from the Nigerian underground, spotlighting a time when Jamaican reggae entwined with Nigerian styles, politics and consciousness, creating a bridge between Lagos and Kingston. Fight the Fire is a companion piece to Soundway’s seminal “Doing it in Lagos” and “Nigeria Special” compilations, celebrating the innovation and musical experimentation of Nigeria in the 80s. Features rare tracks from key figures of the time including Oby Onyioha (with a crucial Burning Spear cover) and Orits Williki.
Humanity’s future — or so we are told — is dependent on technological advances, powered by millions upon millions of computer chips, the primary components of which can be found only in rare-earth deposits. Brazil is among the most important chess pieces in the globalist metagame; it’s home to nearly a quarter of the world’s rare-earth reserves, with next to no regulation (but plenty of corruption and deforestation).
No Ritmo da Terra, the brilliant new album from São Paulo producer and sound designer Antropoceno, is a musical projection of this future, constructed in part as a warning and, mostly, as a statement of Latin American resilience in the face of colonialism. By bridging Brazilian folk and Amazonian field recordings with…
Intensely expressive free-verse vocal laments over sliding violins, hammered santouri, guitar, and oud – the hybrid sounds of the Mediterranean in the early 20th century.
“Aman Aman” cry the singers on these recordings, their voices preserved on 78rpm discs cut between 1911-1935. The phrase roughly translates to “mercy,” a call of despair, but also one of joy and admiration. On many of these sides, that full range of emotion is transmitted at once.
Some of these artists are legends, others lost to time. Nearly half are female vocalists, a big part of the Cafe Aman tradition but not as well represented on contemporary releases. All were affected by conflicts leading up to the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1923, and the forced…
Sacred Lodge is the side project of Paris-based producer/sound artist Matthieu Ruben N’Dongo. Rooted in his ethnomusicological research, which explores the role of music in ritual contexts and his own Equatoguinean heritage, the results are unsettling but compelling, characterised by heady percussion and swarming electronics.
But while his 2019 debut Hijos Del Sol was made up of murky downtempo instrumentals, N’Dongo’s follow-up amps up the intensity almost beyond recognition, with a collection of sludgy, abrasive tracks.
One of the starkest differences is the use of vocals, which have previously only featured as echoey background textures. On Ambam, N’Dongo makes full use of his voice. Inspired by…
Kiss Facility is the duo of Emirati-Egyptian singer and songwriter Mayah Alkhateri and producer Salvador Navarrete, aka Sega Bodega, close collaborator of Shygirl and Oklou. Together, they make spellbinding Arabic alt-pop that bridges elements of shoegaze, trip-hop, post-punk, and deconstructed club. The result? A gothic romance with all the poetic gravity of Arabic songcraft and none of the hang-ups of tradition. KHAZNA, meaning “treasure” or “vault” in Arabic, contains passages of unerring devotion and romantic mysticism alongside vows of mutual destruction such that Kiss Facility’s khazna begins to more resemble an impassioned prison.
The springy synths and chugging guitar riffs that open “Lynch” are promptly assuaged by…
Many extraordinary works fade quietly into obscurity, only to be rediscovered years later. Roland Brival’s Créole Gypsy belongs firmly to this overlooked category, a staggering, deeply political, and intensely beautiful work of Pan-Caribbean spiritual jazz that has remained a ghost in the annals of music history since 1980. Now, rescued from obscurity and newly remastered by Soundway Records, this holy grail of Antillean music finally demands the reckoning it has always deserved. Appreciating Créole Gypsy begins with understanding the life and perspective of its creator. Born in 1950 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, music represents just one dimension of Roland Brival’s versatility. He is a celebrated novelist, poet, literature critic, painter,…
Coming off two excellent records released on Habbi Funk that showed off his skills as a beatmaker, sample wrangler, song crafter and arranger, the Lebanese musician Charif Megarbane teamed with the Indonesian trio Ali to make a record. Tirakat is the result of the pairing and it’s brilliant. Organic, genre-bending, flowing and free, the album was recorded in three days’ time and feels like a well-curated journey through an amazing record collection. They jump all over the map, trip through time, and visit as many styles as possible, all with a mix of precision and spontaneity that makes the record a joy to listen to.
They venture into disco on “Mosaics”, Arabic funk on “Kuda Arab”, tender balladry on Ahmad’s Lament”, dancehall reggae on…
Almost three years after the release of É Soul Cultura, Vol. 2, Luke Una harvests another unmixed crop of deep dancefloor truffles that spans decades, genres, and continents. The well-traveled U.K. underground club institution asserts his intent with track one, “Spread Love” – impelling disco-funk from Harris & Orr, a duo on the same wavelength as Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson.
The ’90s and 2020s are each represented with two cuts, including DJ Harvey’s aloft and beatless mix of DJ Food’s “Peace” and a shadowy downtempo gem from Fatdog. All else dates from the latter half of the ’70s through the late ’80s, and though there’s wide variety even among what was made within close proximity, a dialogue of sorts occurs from track to track.
As AI becomes an increasing threat to humans trying to make a living from creative activities, Nubiyan Twist’s latest album is a defiant riposte. It is a celebration of the joyful energy and chaos that comes from musicians getting together in a room to play. While that could imply a scrappy sound, it would be a wildly inaccurate description of the ensemble. Chasing Shadows represents a skilful interception of jazz, afrobeat, R&B and electronics, fused with a mastery that reflects the nine-piece band’s background having formed in 2011 while studying at the Leeds College of Music.
Their fifth album resists the temptation of indulging in extended jams, all eleven tracks timing around the four-minute mark. New vocalist, Eniola Idowu, brings an extra soulful touch…
Following Léve Léve Vol. 1, this second volume continues a long-term exploration of the popular music of São Tomé and Príncipe, with a clear focus on rhythm, movement and dancefloor energy. Curated by Tom B., Léve Léve Vol. 2 brings together emblematic recordings from the 1970s and ’80s, carefully restored and remastered, designed as much for close listening as for DJ use.
The compilation deepens and completes the first volume by returning to key groups such as Sangazuza, Conjunto Equador, Africa Negra and Pedro Lima, while also unveiling previously unreleased or hard-to-find tracks. Across the record, puxa and socopê rhythms unfold with remarkable intensity, capturing these bands at the height of their powers: tight…
The Israeli-born Ben Aylon won a Best Artist nomination in the Songlines World Music Awards for his 2021 album Xalam.
That recording was a labour of love, the culmination of a decade studying the xalam and kamalengoni while recording in Senegal.
This follow-up takes his musical adventures to the next level, with his own rhythmic and increasingly assured playing augmented by some of West Africa’s finest voices.
Cheikh Lô takes the lead on the slinky, orchestrated mbalax of ‘Terranga’, and Dobet Gnahoré’s husky tones grace ‘Nan You’, which mixes African and electronic influences to fine effect. Elsewhere, the soulful former Super Diamono singer Omar Pene and the Ethiopian-Israeli…
Hailing from Côte d’Ivoire but now based in Berlin, we first came across the balafon player Aly Keïta as part of the Trio Ivoire, whose 2000 debut album was an intriguing exercise in Afro-jazz fusion. Since then, he’s made a number of impressive albums, both solo and collaborative, bridging contemporary jazz and African tradition. But this mostly instrumental set may just be his finest to date. Recorded with a new trio featuring Dutch drummer Marcel van Cleef and Italian bassist Roberto Badoglio, the balafon has rarely sounded so versatile: deeply rooted in African tradition and yet infused with a cosmic, futuristic twist. On ‘Farafinko’, for example, Keïta locks into a timeless West African groove in the style of the Malian virtuoso Lassana Diabaté,…
Taracá is the 15th album by 17-time Latin Grammy winner, Uruguayan singer/songwriter Jorge Drexler. His first in four years, it marks his first time recording at home in two decades. Its contents offer a return to root sounds, in particular candombe. Candombe is a drum-based musical style that originated among the enslaved African population of capital Montevideo, and is based on Bantu African drumming. The musical style was racially marginalized and even banned over its existence (as were Brazilian samba and American blues) but survived, evolved, and in the 21st century, thrived. Like the aforementioned styles, candombe is at an ascendant moment in 21st century popular culture. Drexler plays homage to his recently deceased father here; to that end…
French flautist, saxophonist and composer Jocelyn Mienniel presents a cross-cultural collaboration built upon improvisation and self-imposed limits. Bringing together musicians from five continents, Mienniel and company gave themselves just four hours to experiment together around pre-agreed frameworks before performing the results live that same evening.
Delicate kora, flute, voice, strings and tinkling hand bells coalesce on opener ‘Alalake’, which slowly evolves in hypnotic spirals. The upbeat ‘Hojdaren’ skips and dances, underpinned by some beautiful violin, while ‘Zerberb’ pulses with shuffling beats and swirling percussion. ‘Takamba’ evokes the music of the Andes, filtered through a West African lens. This is wonderfully…
Every once in a while, you get the chance to hear an album that refuses to meet your expectations of what music should sound like, not because the band or artist is pushing boundaries, but because the culture that informed the record is completely different from the one you were born into.
Hoggar, the tenth studio record from the Tuareg band, Tinariwen, is just such an album. It’s hard to imagine a culture more different from the United States than that of the Tuareg, a nomadic people group that inhabits parts of the Sahara Desert in Mali, Algeria, Libya, and Niger. Tinariwen came of age musically amid rebellions and political unrest.
But for over three decades, Tinariwen has been active on the world music scene with a successful career playing a style of music that…
Owelu Dreamhouse (pronounced Oh-WAY-lew) is a collaborative project masterminded by vocalist Nkechi Anele and multi-instrumentalist and arranger Nic Ryan-Glenie, both formerly of the band Saskwatch, with whom the pair helped shape the Melbourne soul renaissance. They now return with their new band, focused on a contemporary take on cinematic soul, supported by a myriad of musicians from their local scene.
Opener ‘Kellen’ sets their stall with its crisp percussion, sweeping strings, funk guitar licks and a searing trumpet solo in the track’s last leg. Anele lights up the record with her commanding vocals that vary from subtle and nuanced on ‘Tourist’ to searing intensity on the Afro-funk meets disco stomper ‘Struggle for Kasawa’.
When Souad Massi left Algeria for Paris in 1999, she carried with her a set of influences as eclectic as they were unlikely: Oum Kalthoum and Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin, classical guitar and Algerian folk poetry. Her debut solo album, Raoui (2001), went gold in France almost immediately, and the records that followed confirmed her reputation as a singular talent: a singer of rare emotional intelligence whose bittersweet voice seemed the perfect vessel for songs of exile, longing and survival.
More than two decades on, and four years since her last album Sequana, that voice remains unmistakable, but Zagate, her new album, finds Massi in a newly unguarded place. Recorded predominantly in the UK and produced…
Badawi was born Raz Mesinai in 1973 in Jerusalem. By spending a lot of time with Bedouins in the Sinai desert as a youngster, he picked up on their unique musical style.
When he reached the age of seven, he was taken under the wing of dervish sheik Murshid Hassan (of the Palestinian refugee camp of Balata), who taught the youngster all about exotic Middle Eastern drumming.
Soon he had mastered such percussive instruments as the bendir, zarb, and darbukka. After moving to New York City, he found himself immersed in the burgeoning NYC Academy of Underground DJs (which included DJ Spooky and a host of others) and changed his name to Badawai (which means “desert dweller” or simply “Bedouin”).