Menahan Street Band, a veritable supergroup of some of today's most prolific songwriters, arrangers, and producers return with this beat-forward, cinematic masterpiece. Their unique brand of instrumental soul has not only been the foundation for some of modern hip-hop's most successful beats, it has also become the perennial soundtrack and veritable vibe-generator for countless parties, art shows, and restaurants throughout NYC and abroad. While this album carries the aesthetic torch that MSB has skillfully woven into the tapestry of their DNA, it also delves deeper into the experimental, exotic sounds that fill many of the coveted Sound Library and Soundtrack LPs of the late sixties and early seventies - an amalgamation of moog synths, electric pianos, drum machines, and a bevy of analog instrumentation, that ebb and flow in lush swells of Morriconian grandeur.-Includes MP3 Download Card

Special Edition Includes the Global Hits

- Limited Edition -

Sudan Archives steht für diverse Stile, eine packende Mischung aus kraftvollem, hymnenhaftem R&B und elektronischer Musik. Ihr Violinspiel ist beeinflusst von Nordostafrikanischer Geigenmusik, aber auch Westafrikanische Rhythmen finden den Weg in ihre Musik.Für Athena hat sie mit einer Vielzahl von Songwritern, Produzenten und Musikern zusammengearbeitet. Die Stücke auf dem Album klingen voller denn je, Sudan Archives bleibt sich und ihrem einzigartigen Stilmix aber treu, der ihr so viele Fans auf der ganzen Welt eingebracht hat. Zu sehen: Eine Bronzestatue von Sudan Archives.

10th Anniversary Edition Indie Exclusive Dirty Money Splatter Color VinylIncludes MP3 Download Card The unstoppable, irresistible rhythms and melodies of Antibalas have influenced scores of artists across rock, hip hop, afrobeat and beyond.Born in a Brooklyn warehouse in 1997, 12 piece ensemble Antibalas is credited with introducing Afrobeat to a wider global audience, influencing countless musicians and developing a live show that is the stuff of legend. Members of Antibalas served as musical directors and the house band in the Broadway hit FELA! and penned original music for the show. Members have also recently collaborated/performed with Iron and Wine, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, Mark Ronson, TV on the Radio and The Roots.On the heels of the hit musical FELA!, Antibalas ended up reuniting with former member and producer Gabriel Roth, who was at the helm for their first three albums. This self-titled album was their first on Daptone Records.

Back in stock! Ghanaian Afro-Rock From Producer/Composer JJ Whitefield, Inspired By His Karl Hector & The Malcouns And Whitefield Brothers Projects JJ Whitefield, who in the early ‘90s revived the gritty, analogue Funk sounds of the ‘60s and ‘70s with his Poets Of Rhythm, has been working with Now-Again Records for over decade, releasing a flock of acclaimed projects with Karl Hector & The Malcouns, Whitefield Brothers, Rodinia and the Original Raw Soul anthology. He first started exploring African rhythms with the Whitefield Brothers in the late ‘90s, continuing in the ‘00s with Karl Hector & The Malcouns. He’s been instrumental in launching Ghanaian Afro Beat/Funk legend Ebo Taylor´s international career, decades after the maestro recorded the landmark albums that have inspired thousands. Whitefield recorded two new studio albums with Taylor and toured in his band between 2009 and 2013, where he met Taylor’s son Henry and percussionist/Singer Eric Owusu. The trio now front the Johnny! band and find inspiration not only in Ghana’s hypnotic grooves, but also the full frontal fuzz guitar assault heard on the legion of 70s Zambian Zamrock albums reissued by Now-Again. Indeed, Whitefield credits his tours with Zamrock godfathers Rikki Ililonga and WITCH’s Jagari Chanda as instrumental in creating the Johnny’s sonic backdrop. The band is rounded out by Turkish drummer Bernd Oezsevim (Woima Collective, Rodinia) and Indonesian bassist/multi instrumentalist Tomi Simatupang (Whitefield Brothers). This is what was oft-called “Afro Rock” at the core, with the possibilities to stretch out into swinging highlife, sweet soul or psychedelia . The results, point at a new direction for the music inspired by the Great Continent. One that takes a direction once mocked as derivative and asserts its importance on the globe’s current musical stage.

Ein Meisterwerk. Unter der musikalischen Leitung des Saxophonisten Issa Cissoko, dessen dezente, jazzige Bläserarrangements sich durch das gesamte Album ziehen, und des Gitarristen Barthélemy Attisso, dessen hypnotische, virtuose Soli hervorstechen, wurde das Album im "Golden Baobab"-Studio in Dakar aufgenommen und dort von dem jungen Ibrahima Sylla produziert. Die Verwendung des Affenbrotbaums, sowohl im Namen als auch in der Symbolik, unterstreicht das Bewusstsein der Gruppe für die traditionellen senegalesischen Werte, wenn sie mit denen von außen kombiniert werden, in diesem Fall mit der afro-kubanischen Musik, die in den 1960er Jahren so populär war. Issa Cissoko: band leader and tenor saxophoneBarthélemy Attisso: lead guitarCharles Ndiaye: bass guitarPape Bâ: guitarPeter Udo: clarinetMontaga Koite: percussionThione Seck: vocalsMedoune Diallo: vocalsNdiouga Dieng: vocals and maracasBalla Sidibe: vocals and timbalesRudy Gomis: vocals

It was in Benin City, in the heart of Nigeria, that a new hybrid of intoxicating highlife music known as Edo Funk was born. It first emerged in the late 1970s when a group of musicians began to experiment with different ways of integrating elements from their native Edo culture and fusing them with new sound effects coming from West Africa´s night-clubs. Unlike the rather polished 1980´s Nigerian disco productions coming out of the international metropolis of Lagos Edo Funk was raw and reduced to its bare minimum. Someone was needed to channel this energy into a distinctive sound and Sir Victor Uwaifo appeared like a mad professor with his Joromi studio. Uwaifo took the skeletal structure of Edo music and relentless began fusing them with synthesizers, electric guitars and 80´s effect racks which resulted in some of the most outstanding Edo recordings ever made. An explosive spiced up brew with an odd psychedelic note known as Edo Funk. That‘s the sound you‘ll be discovering in the first volume of the Edo Funk Explosion series which focusses on the genre’s greatest originators; Osayomore Joseph, Akaba Man, and Sir Victor Uwaifo: Osayomore Joseph was one of the first musicians to bring the sound of the flute into the horn-dominated world of highlife, and his skills as a performer made him a fixture on the Lagos scene. When he returned to settle in Benin City in the mid 1970s – at the invitation of the royal family – he devoted himself to the modernisation and electrification of Edo music, using funk and Afro-beat as the building blocks for songs that weren’t afraid to call out government corruption or confront the dark legacy of Nigeria’s colonial past.

Limited edition of 1000 copies in exact replica

180g vinyl, incl. bonus CD's, Collection of recordings from one of Tanzania’s most revered but short-lived bands of the 1970s, Sunburst. Covering their entire output from 1973 to 1976, this first retrospective features music from their 45 RPM singles on Moto Moto and TFC label, as well as their sole album, "Ave Africa", and an unreleased radio session recorded in Tanzania in 1973. This release comprises of the double vinyl and a copy of the CD version, which contains extra tracks.

In 1972, the country of Rhodesia – as Zimbabwe was then known – was in the middle of a long-simmering struggle for independence from British colonial rule. In the hotels and nightclubs of the capital, bands could make a living playing a mix of Afro-Rock, Cha-Cha-Cha and Congolese Rumba. But as the desire for independence grew stronger, a number of Zimbabwean musicians began to look to their own culture for inspiration. They began to emulate the staccato sound and looping melodies of the mbira (thumb piano) on their electric guitars, and to replicate the insistent shaker rhythms on the hi-hat; they also started to sing in the Shona language and to add overtly political messages to their lyrics (safe in the knowledge that the predominantly white minority government wouldn’t understand them). From this collision of electric instruments and indigenous traditions, a new style of Zimbabwean popular music – later known as Chimurenga, from the Shona word for ‘struggle’ – was born. And there were few bands more essential to the development of this music than the Hallelujah Chicken Run Band.

includes a vaucher to download Mp3Sleevenotes by Bill Brewster

Double LP + Download CodeFirst time collection of Apala music released outside of Nigeria. Includes tracks in related styles, such as Waka, Sakara, Pakeke and Yoruba.

Dick Essilfie-Bondzie was all ready for his 90th birthday party when the Covid pandemic hit. The legendary producer, businessman and founder of Ghana’s mighty Essiebons label had invited all his family and friends to the event and it was the disappointment at having to postpone that prompted Analog Africa founder Samy Ben Redjeb to propose a new compilation celebrating his contributions to the world of West African music. For most of the 1970s Essilfie-Bondzie’s Dix and Essiebons labels were synonymous with the best in modern highlife, and his roster was a who’s-who of highlife legends. C.K. Mann, Gyedu Blay Ambolley, Kofi Papa Yankson, Ernest Honny, Rob ‘Roy’ Raindorf and Ebo Taylor all released some of their greatest music under the Essiebons banner. Yet Essilfie-Bondzie had been destined for a very different career. Born in Apam and raised in Accra, he was sent to business school in London at the age of 20, and returned to the security of a government job in Ghana. But his passion for music, inspired by the sounds of Accra’s highlife scene, had never left him, and in 1967 he figured out a way of combining music and business by opening West Africa’s first record pressing plant. The venture, a partnership with the Philips label, was a huge success, attracting business from all over the continent. By the early 1970s Essilfie-Bondzie had left his government job to concentrate on his labels, and by the mid-seventies he was on a hot streak injecting album after album of restless highlife into the bloodstream of the Ghanaian music scene. Essiebons Special features a selection of obscure workouts from some of the label’s heaviest hitters. But in the course of digitising his vast archive of master tapes, Essilfie-Bondzie found a number of Afrobeat and Instrumental maszterpieces tracks from the label’s mid-70s golden age that, for one reason or another, had never been released. Those songs are included here for the first time. Sadly Essilfie-Bondzie passed away before the compilation was finished. But his legacy lives on in the extraordinary music that he gave to the world in his lifetime. Download for LP from Bandcamp also includes unlimited streaming of *Essiebons Special 1973 - 1984 - Ghana Music Power House* via the free Bandcamp app along with high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more Double LP pressed on 140g virgin vinyl comes with a full color 12-pages booklet

Record Store Day RSD 22, Glitter Gold Coloured Vinyl Realease On December 2013, during Alain Pilot's show “La Bande Passante” and as part of the celebrations for Manu Dibango’s 80th birthday, Radio France Internationale gathered around the African master a bunch of prestigious guests including the Ethio- Jazz ambassadors : Akalé Wubé. The band decided to play live and on air African Pop Session and Ekedi - both written and recorded by the Cameroonian saxophonist in the early seventies - quickly joined by Manu Dibango and his saxophone. Two live recordings of this session will be taken out this pathbreaking and improvised meeting. A great complicity shortly settled between them and, a few months later, Akalé Wubé invited Manu Dibango on their track Anbessa (The Lion in Amharic) composed as a tribute to him. This collaboration led them to share several stages together in the following years. With this RFI session still in mind, Manu Dibango invited the band to join him in studio for Akalé Wubé to arrange and re-record 5 other unknown nuggets from his catalogue : La Colère des Dieux, Du Bush a Bush, Gentlemen de Camp Yabassi, Otetena Munja and Peaceful Homeland. Unfortunately, The Lion won’t make it to the Parisian band’s studio to record his last solos, fate decided otherwise... Akalé Wubé decides to pay a strong and sincere tribute to this friendship through out the album Anbessa - gathering the entire tracks written for or by Manu Dibango and played by the band - in a special LP.  Music By, Lyrics By – Akalé Wubé (Titel: A3 , B3)Manu Dibango (Titel: A1 , A2 , A4 to B2 , B4) Alto Saxophone – Manu Dibango (Titel: A1 , A3 , B1) Saxophone, Flute – Etienne De La Sayette Trumpet, Flugelhorn, Percussion – Paul Bouclier Guitar – Loïc Rechard Bass – Oliver Degabriele Drums – David Georgelet Recorded By, Mixed By – Pierre Dachery (Titel: A2 to A5 , B2 to B4) Viktor Gourarier (Titel: A2 to A5 , B2 to B4) Mastered By – Fabien Girard Artwork – Fred Chailleux