By any measure, Dhafer Youssef is a rare figure in modern music, a Tunisian-born oud virtuoso who has built bridges between Arabic traditions and global jazz, between spiritual contemplation and contemporary sound. Yet even for longtime followers of his work, his new release comes as a surprise. For the first time, Youssef has joined the acclaimed German label ACT, a move that feels both inevitable and long overdue.
Artists from ACT’s roster, bassist Chris Jennings and guitarist Nguyên Lê among them, have been close collaborators for years. Hearing Lê’s lyrical, electric phrasing entwine once again with Youssef’s haunting voice feels like a reunion of kindred spirits rather than a mere session partnership. Their interplay brings depth to…
Category: world
North London Line continues Jah Wobble’s fascination with London’s hidden currents and forgotten spaces, inviting listeners to experience familiar territory through fresh ears. It’s a meditative ride through neighborhoods constantly in flux, powered by a bass that resonates with the rumble of passing trains and centuries of stories beneath the tracks.
The album North London Line (Mildmay) is an interesting concept to me, with the spoken word poetry it has a John Cooper Clarke feel to it, it’s almost a love letter to that area of North to West London. Where did this idea come from what drew you to writing about that and how did you come up with it? John: Well, I’m used to North London over the years, I call it the old North London Line…
…This new remaster, lovingly rendered from an almost impeccable source, is a revelation for anyone who wished to hear more of how this music was meant to sound. Our longtime collaborator Jessica Thompson carefully restored it with updated tools in her state-of-the-art studio.
Struggling artists looking for a break can take comfort in knowing that today it’s not just hard work and dedication that can get you heard. You might need a little patience though: over twenty years in the case of Yaw Atta-Owusu aka Ata Kak. He joins the ranks of the “Sugarmen”, among them Detroit proto-punkers Death, soft-pop balladeer Lewis, and the original Sugarman, Sixto Rodriguez, who remained oblivious for many years to the roaring success of his ‘flop’…
There’s a well-known line, originating with Brian Eno, that although the first Velvet Underground album only sold 30,000 copies, everyone who bought one formed a band. Ghana-born musician Ata Kak, real name Yaw Atta-Owusu, allegedly only sold three copies of his debut album Obaa Sima in 1994; not everyone who bought it formed a band, but one person who did buy it from a roadside vendor while visiting Ghana started a blog in 2006. That blog became big enough to turn into one of the most beloved labels for African music of all time: Awesome Tapes from Africa.
When his music career failed to take flight, Ata Kak was ready to quit. He was living in Toronto, just north of its notorious Jane and Finch area, with his wife Mary and their children…
Swiss label Bongo Joe has been an unstoppable force of cosmopolitan post-punk gems this year, and perhaps no single-artist release encapsulates their 2025 sound more cleanly than 2, the trilingual sophomore release from Yalla Miku.
The lineup has shifted since their first album. However, the sonic scope remains very similar, as the group trace their roots to the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, and North Africa, as well as the Genevan scenes that the group’s members curate and populate regularly.
What they do within that scope, though, has more complexity and texture than the debut. As with so many of Bongo Joe’s recent releases, 2 gives the distinct impression of being the audio equivalent of a zine: it’s multivocal, unpredictable,…
Fast strumming on the ardine, the multi-stringed lute of Mauritania specifically played by women. Noura Mint Seymali singing as if from a long way off. “What Aicha Fall did could never be called brotherhood… She flew off with my heart and cast it into the abyss.” After a minute the music pauses. This is a traditional wedding song, but in this version it jolts into sharp focus, the ardine bolstered by tightly torqued electric guitar — in Bob Dylan’s words, it used to go like that, now it goes like this. The singer’s voice is now right up close. Matthew Tinari’s drums buck and pound, before the vocals retreat behind a veil of echo and harp. This is Mauritanian blues for the 21st century.
Seymali is a hereditary musician — her stepmother was the fabled singer Dimi Mint Abba…
It’s probably about time we retired that nonsense about the pram in the hall. Sure, having a baby will upend your priorities, monopolise your me-time and severely restrict your capacity for hedonistic adventure. But Sessa’s magical third album is further proof that becoming a parent can enhance rather than obstruct your art.
When we first clapped eyes on Sergio Sayeg AKA Sessa, via the back cover of his striking 2019 debut album, he was stripped to the waist and locked in a disconcertingly passionate embrace with an equally half-naked woman. As for the subject matter, one song urged the object of his affections to “me fode de vez” (“fuck me once and for all”), while another was simply entitled “Orgia” (no translation required).
…Zig-Zag Band emerged in the early ’80s, a time when Zimbabwe was forging its post-independence identity, and quickly established itself as one of the country’s most distinctive musical voices. Their sound — a vibrant fusion of reggae, traditional rhythms, brass arrangements, and mbira-inspired guitar — helped define what would become known as Chigiyo, a genre named after a traditional dance from the Chimanimani region.
Formed in Kwekwe under the mentorship of Robson Kadenhe and led by guitarist Gilbert Zvamaida, the band crafted a bold, original style. With intricate guitar lines, infectious dance rhythms, and raw, soulful Shona vocals, they pushed beyond genre boundaries. While many contemporaries opted for commercially safer routes,…
Cheikh Lô has never quite enjoyed the fame of his fellow Senegalese superstars, like his early patron Youssou N’Dour or Baaba Maal, perhaps because of his slower output. Maame is his first album in a decade. It was brought to World Circuit by the label’s former owner, Nick Gold, who deploys the strictest quality control in the business, so the omens were promising.
It does not, in the main, disappoint. A Cheikh Lô record is never going to feature Auto-Tune or hip-hop beats; he barely acknowledges the existence of mbalax, Senegal’s previous dance craze. Opening track “Baba Moussa BP 120”, has an Atlantic sway — in the past he has recorded tracks in the Brazilian state of Bahia. Thierno Koite’s saxophone flutters like a jungle full of birds and…
You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. Perhaps in recent years, we grew guilty of rather taking for granted the special magic of Amadou & Mariam. Between 1998’s international debut Sou Ni Tile and 2017’s La Confusion they released eight studio albums, and in addition we were treated to reissues of their early cassette albums recorded while the blind Malian duo were residents in Cote d’Ivoire. They were all great, it goes without saying, with 2004’s Manu Chao-produced, Grammy-nominated Dimanche à Bamako a career highlight. But the music press is forever lusting after the ‘next big thing’ and is oddly reluctant to allow any artist to settle into a groove once it becomes familiar, however mighty that groove might be. We demand ‘evolution’ and ‘innovation’ – and…
Few guitarists can transform a single note into a melody that sings, burns and heals the way Carlos Santana can. This special collection of live performances-captured from rare and legendary radio broadcasts spanning key moments of his career-offers a front-row seat to the artistry of one of music’s true visionaries.
From the opening bars, Santana’s unmistakable tone pours out like liquid fire, blending Latin rhythms, rock urgency and jazz-inflected improvisation. Backed by his ever-evolving ensemble of world-class musicians, he turns each performance into a journey, shifting effortlessly from hypnotic grooves to soaring, transcendent solos. These recordings showcase the very heart of his genius: the ability to communicate…
A kick drum stitched from bottle tops, a babatone that functions like a well-worn engine, and warm voices that rise together. This is the sound of Malawi’s talented The Kasambwe Brothers, a band that introduces itself with the confidence of veteran musicians. The group’s long history, from the streets of Ndirande, just outside Blantyre, to a residency and recording sprint at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) feeds an album that is joyful, engaging and deeply rooted in Malawian tradition.
A multi-generational unit first assembled in 1987, the Brothers are now led by younger players who learned the craft from family. Their invitation from the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, in partnership with Hen House Studios,…
A mix of tradition and Afrofuturism, acoustic and electronic, east and west fumigating in a cauldron of rhythms, chants, solo explorations and full ensemble blow-outs, Saha Gnawa draws on the example of Essaouira’s annual Festival Gnaoua, which brings together jazz masters and Gnawa maalems on stage.
Here, Maalem Hassan Ben Jaafer from Fes, Amino Belyamani from Casablanca and Ahmed Jeriouda from Sale join forces with drummer Daniel Freedman and a host of other musicians on guitars, sax, keys and synths, raising contemporary electronic sound across the traditional roots of the music.
It opens with the group call-and-response of “Soudani Manayou”, a tribute to the Sahel…
For nearly two decades, Lebanese experimental musicians and composers Raed Yassin and Paed Conca have been developing a thrilling hybrid of Arabic working-class popular music and psych-adjacent free jazz as PRAED, fusing their love of Egyptian shaabi with fried electronics, minimalist composition, and adventurous ambition. For Antwerp’s Summer Bummer Festival in August 2022, the duo assembled an international cast of players – many of whose names will be immediately familiar to followers of contemporary avant-garde currents rooted in the MENA region – to work up the exhilarating suite that comprises The Dictionary of Lost Meanings.
Three elaborate large orchestral compositions are interspersed with more exploratory…
In 1982, London-based Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra recorded a true oddity. Accompanied by her son Kuljit on an early Roland synthesiser and drum machine, the pair laid down nine tracks of Punjabi folk vocals backed by hammering electronic percussion, disco basslines and fizzing synth melody.
Only 500 copies of the resulting album, Punjabi Disco, were pressed; it was released to confusion from a diaspora audience used to the bombast of bhangra. In the decades since, rare LPs have appeared on resale sites, but Kuljit’s recent rediscovery of the master tapes has now made the record widely available for the first time.
The blipping electronic toms and rattling shaker of opening number ‘Disco Wich Aa’ set…
Falle Nioke unveils his debut album on Eat Your Own Ears after years of refining his unique, mercurial sound. The result, Love from the Sea, comes from a planetary body all its own, a macrocosm where ancient and futuristic elements constellate into something wholly unique. Sumptuous in its textures, Nioke’s latest release is exploding with fresh and intoxicating rhythms.
From a young age, Nioke had felt music as his calling. He eventually left his home to join Nimbé Sacré, a troupe of traveling musicians who performed across West Africa. Years later, while on a beach, he met a photographer, and in a twist of fate, encountered her again on the same beach three years later. They married soon after and eventually settled in Margate, UK.
Since the prime time of Bossa Nova in the late ’50s and early to mid-’60s, Brazilian music was one of the rare ones that was consistently able to cross the language barriers around the world, often bringing us some incredible music full of emotional intensity and intricate musicianship that cannot do anything else but transcend borders.
Mr Bongo is one of the Western Hemisphere record labels that is dedicated to bringing the best choice in Brazilian sounds, old and new, to the rest of the world, and with Rubel’s new (fourth) album, Beleza. Mas agora a gente faz o que com isso? (more or less -‘Beauty. But now what do we do with it?’), they have really raised their quality bar.
With the album itself, it is those old and new term from above that can really describe…
Tian Qiyi’s sophomore album Songs for Workers is a rare kind of record: one that refuses to settle into the familiar categories of world music fusion or post-punk revival, instead carving out a space that feels both ancestral and futuristic. The duo — brothers John Tian Qi Wardle and Charlie Tian Yi Wardle — draw deeply from their multicultural lineage: their mother, orchestra founder Zilan Liao, instilled Chinese classical traditions, while their father, legendary bassist Jah Wobble , infused them with the heavy-lidded throb of dub and the restless experimentation of post-punk.
…Charlie contributes erhu (two-stringed vertical fiddle), morin khuur (horsehead fiddle) and vocals. John handles a drumkit, plus an assortment of percussion, including paigu…
To record their fourth album Krok, the members of Soyuz went to Brazil to record at the invitation of like-minded musician Sessa, taking full advantage of the atmosphere in one of the countries whose music influenced their sound to such a large degree. They finished the record back in their adopted home of Poland and the result is a magical version of the jazz-meets-MPB-meets soundtrack music style they had been working on for years. This time around they dig more deeply into the smooth side of the equation with several songs powered by soft strings, bubbling electric piano, and wordless vocal choruses. A track like “P7 Blues” is a prefect encapsulation of their approach. bopping along like incidental music in a very stylish film while also captivating thanks…
Mon Laferte is one of Latin music’s great shape- shifters. The 14 tracks on FEMME FATALE, her followup to the experimental rhythm collision of 2023’s Autopoiética, take on the male myth of the femme fatale (Laferte has often been referred to as “the femme fatale of Latin Music”) and her own relationship to the term, and valiantly redeems it as feminist manifesto reflecting her intelligence, style, self-determined sexuality, and fiery heart. Her songs journey through introspection and darkness before cultural history loses authority to her self-determination, using metaphor, symbolism, and even mysticism in her lyrics. In late 2024 and in July 2025, Laferte played the femme fatale Sally Bowles in a Teatro Insurgentes production of Cabaret in Mexico City. For this recording…