Penya Safari
Early in 2018, after extended field trips to Cuba, Morocco, Turkey and India, the multi-instrumentalist/composer/producer and percussive investigator Magnus P.I (alias Magnus Mehta) and his Afro-Latin collective Penya released their debut "Super Liminal" via London-based On The Corner Records to global critical acclaim. Preceding the release, Magnus P.I had been invited to East Africa by Tanzanian vocalist Msafiri Zawose, where the two spent some time together recording near Msafiri's hometown of Bagamoyo.
"We are standing in a bare, dark, dusty concrete compound with a couple of tiny windows. [...] I have one microphone and a computer, and I’m surrounded by Msafiri’s various instruments hanging on the walls - an array of zeze (string instruments) illimbas (thumb pianos), a marimba, and an array of hand drums and shakers", Magnus recalls. "We start recording at about 10am every morning. We capture the ideas immediately, without much discussion. [...] I ask Msafiri if we can add more voices, so he asks his sister Tabu and brother Bahat to come in – the three voices sound unbelievable."
However, this is not where the story ends. Magnus returned to London, trying to figure out how to bring the recording together and "produce a record that represents the intuitive musical journey [the two] had started." He played the recordings to the band and decided to turn the original Bagamoyo sessions into a sort of collaborative effort.
"It was a tortuous process", Magnus admits. "Integrating the band's ideas with the Bagamoyo material required the creation of many different versions of each track, and it took a long time before any of them started to sound like they were fully integrated." But Msafiri liked the new mixes and willingly contributed fresh material to help advance the project.
Now, two years later, the "Penya Safari" EP features four original tracks "with vocal contributions in Swahili, ancient Yoruba, Finnish, Spanish, and made up languages," along with three remixes by the likes of Tom Blip, Cervo and Guedra Guedra, combining centuries-old musical traditions with modern electronics and club culture motifs. You can buy/stream the full EP below.
More posts
Soleil Kréyol
Good things take time, goes a common expression that, in the case of Marseille-based multi-instrumentalist, DJ, singer/songwriter and producer David Walters, rings true. The co-founder of early 2000s Bordeaux collective Zimpala has been involved in multiple projects over the past two decades and spent the past five years globetrotting, meeting "the gatekeepers to the musical hearts of Africa, South America & Asia" as part of the French TV show "Les Nouveaux [...]
Rise & Shine
While we haven't gotten around to formally introducing them to you, a look at our artist section will reveal Frankfurt-based two-piece The OhOhOhs, aka pianist Florian Waeldele and drummer Florian Dressler. The two music enthusiasts and perfectionists met at a young age and have since been inseparable. Together they create a remarkable range of sounds, music they compose or re-arrange for theatre plays, soundtracks, clubs and even festival stages (e.g. [...]
Platanito / Guacuco
Released in August 2019 in a limited edition of 250, Music With Soul Records' founder Alex Figueira's scorching 7" sold out in a jiffy and recently received a repress. This may not come as a surprise to those who've meanwhile given the two tracks a spin and thus revealed their undeniable dancefloor potential. Never mind the genre, the people love it and so do we.
Side A opens up with a driving, funktified bassline, vicious, snaking grooves and superb drum [...]
Trompeteros
Musically speaking, 2020 is off to a very good start, as we continue to browse and select extraordinary releases from around the world for your listening pleasure. Just last week, the well-respected Madrid-based label Vampisoul (from the Munster Records family, whom you may remember from our piece on Los Saicos' "Demolición") reissued "one of the most sought-after titles from the catalogue of Peruvian label MAG," aka Sonora Casino's album "[...]
Music From Saharan WhatsApp
Christopher Kirkley's Sahel Sounds imprint (Mdou Moctar, Les Filles de Illighadad, Ahmedou Ahmed Lowla) jumpstarts 2020 with its catchy new "Music from Saharan WhatsApp" series: "Every month, we'll be releasing an EP from a musical group in the Sahel. Every album will be recorded on a cellphone, and transmitted over WhatsApp, and uploaded to Bandcamp - where it will live for one month only. Available for pay as you want, 100% of the sales will go directly to [...]
Under The Sun
Not too long ago, we made a surprise discovery at a Berlin independent vinyl market and decided to take the record home with us, if only for the beautiful, die-cut artwork and foldout sleeve. Let's just say that our initial hunch was instantly rewarded and the record remains among our prized possessions. Said album was the Afrodyssey Orchestra's "In the Land of Aou Tila", a seven-track experimental and instrumental advance towards the "remote banks of a West [...]
Cuatro Suyos
All good things come in fours, innit? Berlin-based Eck Echo imprint closed out 2019 with its second vinyl release "Cuatro Suyos", a DJ-friendly EP featuring four Peruvian artists on the move: "The 'Suyos' were the four regional divisions of the Peruvian society that ruled over a large portion of South America before their encounter with Europeans, which completely transformed history in 1532. You had the 'Collasuyo' or 'the region of the Llama' in the South [...]
Auma
While we're at it, here's another release from 2019 that we really felt, but didn't get around to covering. Put out on the wonderful Pingipung imprint (see also Anadol's "Uzun Havalar", Cosima's "Ploaia") back in October, "Auma" is a stunning collaborative project between the multi-talented Hamburg-based percussionist and producer Sven Kacirek – whom you may remember from his ear-opening "Kenya Sessions" (2011) – and Kenyan musician Olith Ratego, hailing [...]
Mogadisco
Let us now travel back in time, metaphorically speaking of course. At the tail end of 2016, Analog Africa's Samy Ben Redjeb arrived in Somalia's capital city of Mogadishu and "began rifling through piles of cassettes and listening to reel-to-reel tapes in the dusty archives of Radio Mogadishu, looking for music that 'swam against the current'." It was there that he discovered a pile of unmarked recordings that apparently nobody had bothered to mess with. The [...]
Invocation
While looking forward to all the new music of 2020, this 2019 release most definitely deserves a special mention: Budapest-born and Berlin-based keyboarder and producer Szabolcs Bognár, aka Àbáse, dropped his astonishing debut on Cosmic Compositions back in May and went on to make several 'best of' lists. And even though we overlooked the initial release, we are now looking to make things right, by making "Invocation" one of our first picks for the new [...]
Silenzio
We are back, alive and almost kicking. It's been some two weeks since our last post here, which we spent resting up, eating and enjoying some time-off with our loved ones. That being said, 2020 is well upon us, so here's wishing you a happy, healthy and peaceful new year. Let's see what this decade has in hold for us.
To get things rolling, we decided to share this blaring prog pop six-tracker with you, released late last October on London-based experimental [...]
Live Goes On
Following the release of their third album "Catastrophic Life", these past weeks have been positively hectic for our dear Jewish Monkeys. First, they embarked on a quick tour of Germany, the Czech Republic, France and Israel. Just ahead of their show at Paris' La Bellevilloise, French daily Libé/Libération wrote a short piece on them, which you can revisit here (if you are proficient in French). The article includes a charming quote by Omer Hershman, who [...]