The unbreathable air saturated with moisture, the soggy soil that swallows every step like a starving death, the hostile nature
and, finally, the remote swamp. The one they invested in composing Fire Eater. The one they left a few traces in.
Tracks that can talk. Six men heavily armed with instruments, a seventh fastest, only weighted by a microphone. They left
the inhospitable vegetation, leaving behind a succession of footprints. As we try to follow them, the afrobeat that made it
easy to spot them now dissipates into a floating mist. So, we have to connect the radars and try to capture the vintage
waves of equipment that emit more than one point but several. Be attentive to jazz solos and funk scarifications, as much
as to what could chant and tap on the times of these tight rhythms. Because their blending has become a personal style as
much as hybrid, and it is to avoid being watched by asphyxiation that they left the stagnant waters.
Escaped from the car sound systems or plastered on the walls announcing their many concerts, it is in the city that they are
now detected. Infiltrating them is a daunting task. A track where you have to avoid the vigilance of the electric and venomous
keyboards, escape the copper flames and the guitar shears. Enter the choking groove to finally enjoy a purely instrumental
passage, sneak in and dance. Progress outside the Afro mangrove, Running The Way nevertheless retains many cables still
connected. The bottom of the jeans still ‘Roforofo’. ‘Muddy’ in Yoruba. Just 2 years after the first EP Fire Eater released in
2021, Radio Nova’s crush (title Helelyos enthroned 3 months in playlist), the Roforofo Jazz returns with the LP Running The
Way, 8 tracks even more ambitious, with careful production, marking a clear progression in its quest for an increasingly
more personal sound and writing. Putting the listener immediately in the tone of his atypical afro jazz rap fury, Love In Time
and its sharp rhythmic appeal to the power of the music, in an ultra-energetic piece yet smelling with jazz via well-felt
keyboard surges. Side To Side is a rearrangement of a piece by Togolese artist Bella Bello and Manu Dibango, yet glancing
towards Motown and resonating like a anthem to life and directions to take to counter the negativity of our modern societies.
Then on Stand Up in a more deepfunk US style like Breakestra or The Greyboy Allstars, MC Days (aka RacecaR) switches
between fast flows and downtempo in an injunction to all fight for what we believe in. An epic piece concluded with a nod
to Master Hendrix… Gas punctuates the A side with a light but saving rhythmic lull, coming closer to a nu-soul atmosphere
and punctuated with an explosive refrain in which rap, rock and jazz clash, tending to prove as Days chants that by being
more realistic our differences can only fade…Title Shawarma has nothing to do with a Kebab sandwich, although…! Life
unfolds like a menu, in which everything is not always to our liking but which teaches us to accept judicious and juicy mixes,
and combinations. The result is a joint with an oriental touch, almost ethio, a rhythm that perfectly matches the hip-hop flow
and the Roforofo Jazz style.The Big Hustle is a UFO. Articulated around a 20 bars loop that gives it a communicative energy,
punctuated by a bass line reminiscent of Fela Kuti’s Colonial Mentality, this title sounds like a highway for frantic breakbeat
dancers; epic!
From Here To Benin brings us back to the group’s Afro-inspired origins, while injecting a slight dose of well-felt pop music.
A piece that encourages travel to learn to share, universally.
And finally, Mode For DD, a cover of the instrumental title of the obscure jazz funk of The Awakening, with added voice of
Days telling the meaning of life and its mysteries, our beliefs and certainties, as human beings as well as artists.

Tracklist:

A1 - Love In Time
A2 - Side To Side
A3 - Stand Up
A4 - Gas
B1 - Shawarma
B2 - The Big Hustle
B3 - From Here To Benin
B4 - Mode For DD More

Continuing his journey, the former member of Egypt 80 and last trumpeter of the Black President Fela Kuti releases his
second album: APP (Accumulation of Profit & Power).
Muyiwa Kunnuji and his band Osemako, which has been extensively recasted since Moju Ba O - which had already laid
the foundations of his afroclassicbeat - have had quite an evolution, and are eager to share a recipe that has been
patiently elaborated and stewed, both on stage and in the studio.
A complex mix of deep musical and cultural heritages as well as a claimed and combative Pan-African culture, APP sets
the bar still one step higher in the message, but also and especially in terms of composition and polyrhythms. Inspired by
Western African highlife as well as the purest afrobeat of the Afrika 70 era, and even incorporating elements of South
African marabi or Central African soukous, the whole does not sound less perfectly personal, tailored, with a natural and
disconcerting ease.
But this easiness is only an apparent as Muyiwa devoted himself body and soul to the composition and harmony during
the gestation of these tunes so widely inspired and yet intensely personal.
APP will thus delight fans of African music in the broad sense as well as connoisseurs, and just as much fans of funk
grooves or jazzy solos; it is a deeply plural album. Multi-influenced, multicultural, multilingual, a slice of life as much as an
initiatory journey, on which hovers the spectre of Covid, which has also largely inspired this second ‘effort’. Standing
against absurd sanitary rules or the accumulation of profits by the powerful of this world and other
pseudo-philanthropists, APP, again, reminds us of the great Fela, as much by the use of an acronym to entitle the album
as by the themes addressed or the mixing of genres. A warrior album, filled and full of revendications, but also of calls for
open-mindedness. An intensely human, sincere, combative album, and however radically enthusiastic and optimistic.

TRACKLIST:
A1. Bro Hugh
A2. Oshelu
A3. Meeting Point
B1. Recipe Of Death
B2. G.O.A. (Giant Of Africa)
B3. Sanitize Your Heart More