In late 2013 I was trying to take a disconap before djing a New Years party in Glasgow. All I could think about was finally getting in touch with Ata Kak. I decided to book a oneway flight to Toronto and I was not going to leave until I found some family contacts. It turned out Yaw's son Jeffrey still lives there and we had this incredible meeting in a townhouse complex on the edge of town.

I couldn't believe it when I finally spoke with Yaw and explained to him how well-loved his music had become. ATFA the label had been operating for several years by then but the tape that really started the whole thing couldn't get reissued. Once we got in touch all the complexities of how to actually do that came into focus.?It always irked me that our reissue of Obaa Sima didn't sound excellent. Nevertheless, it has a sonic charm that endures. Obaa Sima was a kind of manifesto for the whole Awesome Tapes From Arica blog project when it started. That sound and approach embodied something I wanted to further explore.

After years of enjoying his music, it was thrilling to finally meet Yaw and hear his story. I wanted to let everyone hear the music in the highest resolution possible but we couldn't make it happen.?In early 2024, by some cosmic coincidence, I made a new friend in my Berlin neighborhood who causally introduced himself by saying, "I have a clean copy of Obaa Sima, you can have it if you want." Not just wildly kind but also serendipitous as we reach the 10th year since the cassette's reissue.?

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.?

Over the past 15 years or so, as I DJ these Ata Kak songs at almost every show, I still feel a sense of wonder upon listening. You can go deep into the crevices of the very audible audio artefacts and hear a lot. Maybe it's a little sad to part ways with the wows and flutters whose contours I'd grown to know like the back of my hand.?When I visited Yaw in Kumasi a few years ago for a documentary shoot, it was shocking to learn that his brother had actually sold quite a few copies of the tape. As we moved through Kejetia market one day we encountered a handful of folks who remembered hearing Obaa Sima back around its release in 1994. More recently, thanks to a few Ghanaian-made viral TikToks, I've learned how many people of a certain age heard these songs as staples at funerals and other local dance parties. The music reached a lot more people despite what Yaw had reported. ?

I was also surprised to learn that the album was originally recorded at a slower speed—we have included a slow version download here.?In the years since, the concerts that Ata Kak has performed have been one of the absolute joys of my life to experience. It couldn't have been achieved without the intense dedication of Ata Kak's booking agents at the time QuJunktions and his London-based bandmates, including Esa Williams, Pax Nindi, Binisa Bonner and Tim Tapsell. Hearing Obaa Sima live is astounding and thousands of people all over the world have been there too.?

—Brian Shimkovitz, Berlin 2025

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In late 2013 I was trying to take a disconap before djing a New Years party in Glasgow. All I could think about was finally getting in touch with Ata Kak. I decided to book a oneway flight to Toronto and I was not going to leave until I found some family contacts. It turned out Yaw's son Jeffrey still lives there and we had this incredible meeting in a townhouse complex on the edge of town.

I couldn't believe it when I finally spoke with Yaw and explained to him how well-loved his music had become. ATFA the label had been operating for several years by then but the tape that really started the whole thing couldn't get reissued. Once we got in touch all the complexities of how to actually do that came into focus.?It always irked me that our reissue of Obaa Sima didn't sound excellent. Nevertheless, it has a sonic charm that endures. Obaa Sima was a kind of manifesto for the whole Awesome Tapes From Arica blog project when it started. That sound and approach embodied something I wanted to further explore.

After years of enjoying his music, it was thrilling to finally meet Yaw and hear his story. I wanted to let everyone hear the music in the highest resolution possible but we couldn't make it happen.?In early 2024, by some cosmic coincidence, I made a new friend in my Berlin neighborhood who causally introduced himself by saying, "I have a clean copy of Obaa Sima, you can have it if you want." Not just wildly kind but also serendipitous as we reach the 10th year since the cassette's reissue.?

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.?

Over the past 15 years or so, as I DJ these Ata Kak songs at almost every show, I still feel a sense of wonder upon listening. You can go deep into the crevices of the very audible audio artefacts and hear a lot. Maybe it's a little sad to part ways with the wows and flutters whose contours I'd grown to know like the back of my hand.?When I visited Yaw in Kumasi a few years ago for a documentary shoot, it was shocking to learn that his brother had actually sold quite a few copies of the tape. As we moved through Kejetia market one day we encountered a handful of folks who remembered hearing Obaa Sima back around its release in 1994. More recently, thanks to a few Ghanaian-made viral TikToks, I've learned how many people of a certain age heard these songs as staples at funerals and other local dance parties. The music reached a lot more people despite what Yaw had reported. ?

I was also surprised to learn that the album was originally recorded at a slower speed—we have included a slow version download here.?In the years since, the concerts that Ata Kak has performed have been one of the absolute joys of my life to experience. It couldn't have been achieved without the intense dedication of Ata Kak's booking agents at the time QuJunktions and his London-based bandmates, including Esa Williams, Pax Nindi, Binisa Bonner and Tim Tapsell. Hearing Obaa Sima live is astounding and thousands of people all over the world have been there too.?

—Brian Shimkovitz, Berlin 2025

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Tracklist:

1.Yegle Nesh (Live)
2.Tizita (Live)
3.Belew Beduby (Live)
4.Anchihoye Lene (Live)
5.Abichu Nega Nega (Live)
6.Yetewat Hil (Live)

It’s been a little over ten years since Hailu Mergia re-emerged on the international music scene. Following the first in a series of his classic recordings reissued in collaboration with Awesome Tapes From Africa, Mergia assembled a band and began performing live again after many years driving a cab in Washington, DC. His first show back appeared on the front page of the New York Times along with a stellar review and he took off from there performing his flavor of Ethiopian jazz all over the world in the years since, including Radio City Music Hall and Montreal Jazz Festival.

Finally, we have a recorded document of the keyboard player’s powerful DC-based trio—which practices each weekend in his basement—featuring Kenneth Joseph on drums and Alemseged Kebede on bass. Beautifully captured at one of their fiery live shows at the venerable Brooklyn non-profit cultural center Pioneer Works on July 1, 2016, the concert was recorded by PW staff and mixed by Ted Young with mastering by ATFA’s expert audio extraction collaborator Jessica Thompson. The performance clarifies what many people across the globe already know: in his fifth decade of music-making Hailu Mergia continues to push the boundaries of his remarkable abilities.

Mergia and his veteran band energetically and playfully unpeel layer after layer of harmonic and rhythmic interest out of a spectrum of Ethiopian repertoire. Modern jazz demands constant reinvention and improvisation, night after night creating new works out of known modes and classic standards. This band is unstoppable when it comes to turning age-old melodies (like “Tizita” or “Anchihoye Lene”) upside down and inside out until they emerge as molten new works, often spontaneously. Mergia’s original compositions (like “Yegle Nesh”) shine brighter than ever here as well. Moving from keyboard to organ to accordion to melodica, he deftly switches instruments—often during the same song. Mergia at 77 years old seems to be working harder than musicians half his age.

"Pioneer Works Swing (Live)" brings into focus the kind of onstage group improvisation and deadly solo passages that reach for places Mergia and the band have never gone, on festival and club stages across four continents.

Now that Mergia has released two new recordings along with four classic reissues, he is eager to let everyone hear what he’s been doing on the road since he re-took the global stage for his victory laps. So much more than an old act from yesteryear, Mergia balances his legendary Ethiopian recordings with good old-fashioned sweat-soaked live concert triumphs such as the one we have here.

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DJ Black Low burst on the international scene last year with Uwami, a collection of his early, downright avantgarde amapiano work. The young producer and DJ makes electronic music that sounds like nothing else: glitchy and fierce while smooth and soulful, all under the rubric of South Africa's most-exported dance music movement to date. Now comes Uwami II, which features the rest of the tracks from the acclaimed debut plus a new song "Gijima." The Pretoria, South Africa-based artist has more work in the pipeline as we present these inimitable songs for the first time on vinyl. The song "Gijima" is a previously unreleased track Black Low chose to include in this collection as cremates more work at a furious pace. "This is essential listening from a 20 year-old star." - Resident Advisor Best Tracks of 2021 "Uwami keeps an adventurous spirit at its core and pushes far beyond genre conventions in the process." - The Vinyl Factory "A producer with a fully realized voice." - Bandcamp Best Albums of Winter 2021 "The hard hitting beats of the electronic percussions make the songs seem like they're out of this planet." - AfroPop Worldwide

TRACKLISTING: 01. ALONE IN A DARK [+ MR. PERFECT FEAT. DJ LA BENGWA] 02. SBONO (VOCAL MIX) [FEAT. DJ LABENGWA, LICY JAY & MENATE ENTERTAINMENT] 03. DOWN THE ROAD (ORIGINAL MIX) [FEAT. DJ LA BENGWA] 04. VULA VALA 05. 60 DAYS NO SLEEP 06. GIJIMA (VOCAL MIX) [FEAT. STATAH & DAFF GEE]

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Tracklist:

1 KADI YOMBO
2 GHO MITSABA NA VOKO
3 BOSSOGHO AKÉTI NA MISSINGUI
4 MOGHOGHO
5 GHO MINONGO
6 NGONDÉ
7 POPEDAKA
8 NIAGHAULIANO GHUNI
9 KUDU
10 GHO BOKA NZAMBÉ

Kadi Yombo, published in 1989, is the most successful album in the quest for a fusion between tradition and modernity in Bwiti harp music of the Tsogho people of Gabon. Combining beating rattles with a layer of synthesizers, Papé Nziengui blends in a contrapuntal dialogue characteristic of harp playing: male song in appeal and female choir in response, male voice of the musical arc and rhythms of female worship. But above all it's Tsogho ritual music and modern studio orchestration. The result is an initiatory itinerary of 10 musical pieces which are all milestones likely to be simultaneously listened to, danced, meditated on, and soon acclaimed. In the years since, Nziengui has traveled he world from Lagos to Paris, from Tokyo to Cordoba, from Brussels to Mexico City to become a true icon, the emblem of Gabonese music. Like Bob Dylan, "electrifying" folk and Bob Marley mixing rock with reggae, some purists have criticized Nziengui for having distorted the music of harp by imposing a cross with modern instruments. They even went so far as to claim that Nziengui was just an average harpist covering his shortcomings with stunts that were only good for impressing neophytes; like playing a harp placed upside down behind his back or playing two or three harps simultaneously. Sincere convictions or venomous defamations, in any case, Nziengui never gave in to such attacks, imposing himself on the contrary to pay homage to the elders (Yves Mouenga, Jean Honoré Miabé, Vickoss Ekondo) while instructing the maximum of young people. He is thus the promoter of many young talents, the most prominent of which is certainly his nephew Jean Pierre Mingongué. In a conservative society where the sacred is confused with secrecy, exposing the mysteries of Bwiti in broad daylight can be punished by exclusion or even execution. Papé Nziengui has always claimed that he faces such risks because he never felt enslaved to a community that governs his life, that regulates his conduct, that has a right of censorship over his activities. Like Ravi Shankar, the famous sitarist, Papé Nziengui is a man of rupture but also of openness, a transmitter of culture. As proof, he has established himself in Libreville, Gabo's capital, as the main harpist for sessions and concerts, accompanying the greatest national artists (Akendengué, Rompavè, Annie-Flore Batchiellilys, Les Champs sur la Lowé, etc.) as well as foreign artists (Papa Wemba, Manu Dibango, Kassav', Toups Bebey, etc.). In 1988, he was the first harpist to release an album in the form of a cassette produced by the French Cultural Center (Papé Nziengui, Chants et Musiques Tsogho). At the same time, he created his own group (Bovenga), combining traditional music instruments (musical bow, drums, various percussion instruments, etc.) in the framework of a true national orchestra, which gave the first concert and the first tours of a traditional music that was both modern and dynamic, thus "democratizing" the harp, to the dismay of certain purists. On the other hand, in modern music, dominated by the logic of profit or even commercialism, artistic creation must often be adjusted for a specific audience based on reason rather than heart. But instead of allowing himself to be distorted, Papé Nziengui has always tried to produce music that is not a caricature, worthy in its expression as in its content, of the sacredness and transcendence of the music of the Origins. This is what makes Nziengui-not only the musician, but the man-someone whose age hasn't altered any of his freshness or authenticity.

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TRACKLIST
01. TEZETA
02. ENDEGENA
03. ZENGADYW DEREKOU
04. GUMEGUM
05. NEFAS NEW ZEMEDIE
06. ATMETALEGNEM WOI
07. MESTIRAWI DEBDABE
08. OU-OU-TA
09. AYA BELEW BELEW

Unknown recording outside Ethiopia which documents Mergia Hailu & The Walias legendary early period. Beautifully-rendered instrumentals of classic Ethiopian standards, "Tezeta"is the follow-up reissue of the hugely popular seminal Ethiopian instrumentals LP "Tche Belew" (ATFA012). It was a Cassette-only release in 1975 on the band's in-house label, to fund their record store. From their genesis as members of the Venus club in-house band in the early 70s, Hailu Mergia and the Walias Band were at the forefront of the musical revolution during an era where modern instruments and foreign styles superseded the traditional fare to become the staple sound of Ethiopia. No one would argue that the Walias were the trailblazing powerhouse of modern Ethiopian music. They were the first band to form independently without affiliation to a theatre house, a club or a hotel; unprecedented and risky as they had to raise all funding for expenses by themselves including buying equipment. They were the first to release full instrumental albums, considered to be commercially unviable at the time. They opened their own recording studio, with band members Melake Gebre and Mahmoud Aman doubling as technical buffs during sessions. They were also the first independent band to tour abroad. In short, they were the pioneers every band tried to emulate; some more successfully than others. Odds are, any Ethiopian over the age of 35 who had access to TV or radio by the early 90s, will instantly recognize the sound of Walias. What is not a given is, how many would actually identify the band itself. Barely a day went by without hearing the Walias either in the background on radio or as an accompaniment to various programs on TV. This Tezeta album, the band's second recording, released in 1975, is one of those that have been impossible to find for nearly three decades. Sourced by Awesome Tapes From Africa and expertly remastered by Jessica Thompson, its unique and funky renditions of standards and popular songs of the day are so quintessentially Walias, flavorful and evocative. Hailu's melodic organ, unashamedly front and center in every track, makes even the complex pieces accessible. Profoundly engaging; it's an immersive trip down memory lane for those of us getting reacquainted with it, while also an enthralling and gratifying experience for fresh ears.

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At the age of 28, Awalom Gebremariam arrived in the United States, following a years-long journey from Eritrea. He'd made it to a refugee camp in Ethiopia several years ago and eventually attained asylum status for passage to America. But before he left his hometown, Eritrea's capital Asmara, he made his first and only recording so far, Desdes. In 2006, Awalom began to teach himself two of Eritrea’s most recognizable and important folk instruments, the wata and the krar. Although they have roots in traditional music, they are heard in most Eritrean folk and pop recordings. Awalom completed Desdes in 2007, not long before he departed Eritrea. Because Awalom left after the recording he never received any money for cassette and CD sales. But he also didn't get to find out how much of an impact the songs have had locally. His songs appear to focus on love, but Awalom isn't speaking about romantic love per se. Much of the music Awalom heard growing up was intertwined with Eritrea's difficult and contentious split from Ethiopia. In 2012, during a trip to Switzerland to help promote a film about biking in Eritrea, ATFA was given a copy of Desdes by fixed-gear bicycle athlete Patrick Seabase, the documentary’s protagonist. Seabase gave a copy to ATFA founder Brian Shimkovitz as a gift and it later appeared on the ATFA blog. ! A few years later Shimkovitz was contacted by some agencies in North Carolina, where Awalom had settled. Through a translator very one decided to work together on a reissue of his recording. It took many months to source a clean master but now the album is ready and Awalom’s goals are clear. He spent years waiting for the chance to escape economic and political turmoil at home. Now 29 and living in North Carolina, he works in a restaurant and plans to bring his music to Eritrean communities across North America as well as newer listeners with whom his powerful sounds and remarkable journey will deeply resonate

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collector 12'' re issue : new exclusive visual & packaging : Sleeve made in silver mirror cardboard printed in navy blue + gold stamping. A side : Originla version, recut from Original Vinyl Master. B Side : Exclsuive Etched Design.

TRACKLIST

A. Music Sounds Better With you (Long Version - Re Cut from the Oriignal Master )
B. Exclusive Etched Design

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Colour LP in in Fission Red* (Only Variant!)
WILLIAM ONYEABOR IN COLOR!! 10TH ANNIVERSARY!! William Onyeabor self-released these records in 1978 and 1980, respectively, before he gave up his life as the greatest Nigerian funk artist to become a devout Christian. Body and Soul is available in Blue Vinyl, Atomic Bomb in Red Vinyl.

Tracklist
1.1Beautiful Baby
1.2Better Change Your Mind
1.3Atomic Bomb
1.4Shame
1.5I Need You All Life

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Incl. Jeff Mills Solid Sleep Mix) Reissue of 1997 F Communication's Techno track Crispy Bacon with Jeff Mills remix

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