Congo Beat The Drum
Fortuna Records' Kalbata, aka Ariel Tagar, teamed up with fellow producer Mixmonster, aka Uri Wertheim, to produce an album as well as a newly released documentary entitled "Congo Beat The Drum", retracing the origins of Jamaican music. Well actually, the story goes a little something like this:
"Ariel and Uriwent into their home studio in Tel Aviv, Israel with the purpose of recording a 100% analogue dub album in the spirit of the late King Tubby and the early dancehall era of the late 70's and early 80's. A 16-track tape machine and an old analogue mixing desk were their main instruments, with musicians playing live all throughout the album. A year after recording the instrumental backing tracks, they travelled to Kingston, Jamaica and started tracking down their favourite singers and deejays from days gone by."
The result is not just a great album, featuring the likes of Puddy Roots, Little John, Major Mackerel, Mutabaruka, Trinity, Jah Thomas, Tullo T, Echo Minott or the late Prince Jazzbo, but also a highly entertaining and equally informative 1-hour documentary shot by Ariel himself, or as UK-based online mag Stamp The Wax puts it, "a unique musical journey into the forgotten corners of reggae of the seventies and eighties, and a rare glimpse into the smoky, dusty world of Rub-a-Dub and its past champions" . Watch below...
More posts
Alsarah & The Nubatones
Wait what? Was pretty much our reaction, when we first heard Alsarah & The Nubatones perform three songs off their sophomore album "Manara" live for NPR's Tiny Desk concert series.
Based in Brooklyn and blending "a selection of Nubian 'songs of return' from the 1970s-today with original material and traditional music of central Sudan" , the Sudanese-born Alsarah and her band The Nubatones (composed of Alsarah [vocals], Nahid [additional vocals], Rami El Aasser [...]
ShellacHead's Annual Selection
'Tis the season for giving. And oh what a gift ShellacHead's David Murray has compiled for all us music lovers out there. Following in the footsteps of his "Lost 45s of Sudan" release earlier this year, Murray dug deep into his crates of 78 rpm records and just released "ShellacHead's Annual" year-end compilation with a selection of his favourite 2016 finds from around the globe.
This here is true black gold, featuring a diverse 20-track selection of rarities [...]
Tribal Affairs
APE Records' sizzling duo Loco Hot, made up of BBB drumlord Tamir Muskat and lead vocalist Gilad Kahana, returns with its brand new single "I'm A Tribe", a collaborative effort with the mesmerising Yemenite sisters of A-Wa (watch their breakthrough single "Habib Galbi") and yet another example of top shelf production work. The official music video released towards the end of October and already collected over 135K views on YouTube. Rightfully so: Decked out [...]
North African 78s
Late last week The Vinyl Factory released a mix of North African 78 rpm records by ways of Parisian blog Ceints de bakélite, tracing the origins of Maghreb music. Ceints de bakélite specializes on 78s from around the world, focussing mainly on non-Western popular music and other musical curiosities.
The 52-minute mix features 12 tracks spanning "both folk and popular music recordings made in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia from the 1930s to the 1950s. It [...]
A Tribe Called Red
Months of protests led by the Native American Sioux Indian community, involving hefty clashes between demonstrators and federal law enforcement on behalf of a planned pipeline project in the state of North Dakota, took a decisive turn this weekend, as the US Army intervened and will now allegedly look into alternative routes.
Meanwhile, across the border in Canada, native producer and DJ crew A Tribe Called Red (est. 2008), aka Bear Witness, 2oolman and DJ [...]
...To The Beat Of The Drum
East London-based Sofrito collective/imprint has been steadily adding flavour to a vast global scene of tropical club culture for the past decade and is still going strong:
"Sofrito mixes up vintage sounds from across the tropics with modern productions and exclusive dubplate specials, bridging the gap between eras and continents to produce a unique and intense sound that has seen them play at clubs and festivals across the world, [...] while the label covers [...]
Threesome
"What started out as studio jams in a smoky basement in Berlin evolved into a world-wide-touring, three-headed, music-making love monster."
Leave it to Tel Aviv's Buttering Trio to release an intensely melodious third album, with a beauty of an opener, somewhat reminiscent of the thoroughly enriching soundscapes of a certain Portishead.
And yet, composed of bassist/prolific producer Beno Hendler, production wizard/Raw Tapes founding father Rejoicer and majestic [...]
Documenting Nyanza
Sometimes it's nice to follow up on musical projects from around the world, we've already introduced to you. Take London/Kenyan Owiny Sigoma Band for instance, who released their third longplayer "Nyanza" last year in August via Gilles Peterson's Brownswood Recordings imprint along with a trailer, previewing the accompanying documentary to the project.
Well, as you may have guessed, the 20-minute documentary was released over a year ago and we just realized, [...]
Waysser Behr
With temperatures in the Eastern and parts of the Western Hemisphere leaning towards zero these days, who wouldn't want to be a polar bear?!
Just the time for us to return to the vaults and dig up this frosty little gem for you.
Let us fill in the blanks: Back in 2014, the enigmatic artist still known as Joe Fleisch (front-runner of the Jewish Monkeys under his real name Jossi Reich) teamed up with budding French pop arrival Petite Meller, an enticing [...]
Gaza Trip
November 15th marked Palestinian Independence Day, as proclaimed by Yasser Arafat in 1988. And although this day may have slipped under your radar, MALOX decided to issue a musical statement by premiering the official music video to the title track of their third studio album "Gaza Trip" on this day.
The video features a rare collaboration between two Israeli musicians, aka MALOX, and Palestinian parkour athletes 3run Gaza. Despite ongoing political [...]
Kofelgschroa
"These guys are just like their lyrics: They're hard to nail down, it's as if music somehow happened to them.” – German weekly Die ZEIT
The less we know about something the more curious we get. When it comes to this quartet, hailing from the municipality of Oberammergau, picturesquely situated in the Bavarian Alps, a simple truth proves valid yet again.
Kofelgschroa are four craftsmen and artists, who have been going against the grain for the past eight [...]
Airplanes And Apples
If it's answers you are looking for, well, keep on looking. Because providing definite answers to life's most existential questions would be pretentious to say the least and that is not what Istanbul's free-spirited, borderline nihilist, progressive rock outfit Nihil Piraye is all about. The seven-piece ensemble would much rather ask questions, serve up food for thought and do its musical thing.
If we may diverge into existential nihilism for a moment, being [...]