Comet Records presents from Afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen, N.E.P.A Reissue LP Vinyl remastered and
coming in an heavy Deluxe Tip-On Jacket.
In 1979, Tony Allen decided to leave Fela Kuti & Africa 70 and moved to London in 1982. Originally
Released in 1984 on Earthworks Records, this reissue holds an extra track previously unreleased on vinyl
called “Olokun”. N.E.P.A (Never Expect Power Always) is a searing critique of the Nigerian Electric Power
Authority, an organisation that governed the use of electricity in Nigeria.
It starts out with the title track, with a definite Afro-beat punch. Electro-claps stand as part of the
percussion line, adding to a more modern look at what Afro-beat was becoming.
This is followed by an even further modernized piece of Afro-beat, as the title track is given a dub mix.
“When One Road Close” has a similar pace, and is similarly followed by a dub remix, complete with the
necessary space-effects reverb.
And to make this reissue extra special the track “Olokun” was never released on vinyl before.
Blending the nascent rise of electronica into Afrobeat production, it’s tighter than any Fela album and
became a definitive project in shaping Allen’s future sound. Whether it’s the electro beats or the punchier,
multilayered arrangement, it instantly stands out in Allen’s vast and expansive discography.

TRACKLIST:
A1. N.E.P.A. (Never Expect Power Always)
A2. N.E.P.A. Dance Dub
B1. When One Road Close (Another One Go Open)
B2. Road Close Dance Dub
B3. Olokun

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Mark Ernestus, one half of the Basic Channel, Maurizio and Rhythm & Sound teams, inaugurates our series of reworkings of tracks from Tony Allen’s Lagos No Shaking album. Mark’s Mix is not a nowadays-style remix, more an extended mix in the classicaltradition headed by Tom Moulton, back in the days when Francois Kevorkian was his teaboy, and there was a cupboard in his office stuffed with Studio One master-tapes. Mark’s Disco Dub is its dub.



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Completing the recent LP reissue of Black Voices by Tony Allen, Comet presents a 2 tracks remix EP by Folamour and NIT. The two rising French producers provide great new versions of “Get Together” and “The Same Blood”.


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As part of the ten-year anniversary Dekmantel presents the final record in a ten-part-EP series. Split into two parts due to its immensity, the final instalment is a re-issue of Tony Allen’s ‘Asiko (In A Silent Mix)’ originally released in 1999 and remixes by Motor City Drum Ensemble and Ricardo Villalobos. The first part features a grandiose 29-minute Ricardo Villalobos version of the Afrobeat master’s cut. A true collaboration of giants. Having been a regular at the festival for several years now, Villalobos delivers a remix, one of his longest to date, that only he can produce. Allowing the percussion to breathe into a monumental rhythm, Villalobos warps the vocals, restructuring the bass and drums into a rolling dub-fusion of techno that is characteristic of his remixes to date, yet still breathtaking in its execution. Afrobeat-minimalism, with dub-infused fire, and near psychedelic ambience that perfectly synchs the worlds of Tony Allen, and Ricardo Villalobos, two legends who’ve helped re-shape the face of music. Highlighting the diversity of sounds that have come to represent the Dutch label and festival series, the EPs to date have encompassed a range of artists and genres, featuring label favourites, as well as whole bunch of debuting artists. The EP series kicked off in March 2018, and over the course of a year featured the likes of Gigi Masin, Lena Willikens, Burnt Friedman, Donato Dozzy, The Egyptian Lover, Palms Trax, and more.

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After Mark Ernestus' mix of Moyege in this series, now his Basic Channel / Rhythm And Sound partner comes to the control tower. Moritz's deep Berlin steppers discloses dubwise traces of our original Lagos recording — the percussion of Yinka Ogunye, the singing of fifties palmwine legend Rolling Dollar, Oscar Olimbi's guitar lick — in with his own Oberheim voicings, additional drumming, and cool-and-deadly rhythm track. It's a tough, masterly dance record in fine Rhythm And Sound style — which during its ten-and-a-half minutes seems to ponder time elapsed and journeys undertaken. Like a stepping razor, but t-u-m-p-i-n. This Reggae Land version is the take-no-prisoners, pared-down dub of Wareika Hill Sounds' rootical rework of Ise Nla. Magnificent trombone and percussion; expert, classical JA mixing. Brings to mind those great dubs of Glen Brown's Black Man Stand Up Pan Foot.


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Killer EP. Next-level Shackleton.

Taking off from Beaugars Seck’s foundational sabar drum rhythms — recorded by Sam in Dakar in February 2020 — Shackleton has constructed a trio of intricately layered, luminous, enchanted, epic excursions. The second is more dazzled and meandering, with jellied bass, insectile detail, and discombobulated jabbering; the third is more liquid, fleet of foot, and psychedelic, with a grooving b-line and funky keyboard stabs, scrambled eastern strings and hypnotic vocalese.

The harmonium in The Overwhelming Yes sounds like Nico blowing in chillily from up the desert shore. The overall mood is wondrous, twinkling with light, onwards-and-upwards; an uncanny, dubwise mix of the ancient and the futuristic. Mark Ernestus’ Version is stripped, trepidatious, mystical, and stranger still, with just a snatch of the original melody, extra distortion and delay, and crystal-clear drum sound.

Twenty minutes of startlingly original music, with Shackleton the maestro at the top of his game, and a characteristically evilous dub by Mark Ernestus. Mastered by Rashad Becker; handsomely sleeved.

Sick to the nth. Love 4 Ever.

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Tony Allen’s drumming centered, adventures into Techno-Jazz fields w/ Max Loderbauer

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Repress!
Mark Ernestus, one half of the Basic Channel, Maurizio and Rhythm & Sound teams, inaugurates our series of reworkings of tracks from Tony Allen’s Lagos No Shaking album. Mark’s Mix is not a nowadays-style remix, more an extended mix in the classicaltradition headed by Tom Moulton, back in the days when Francois Kevorkian was his teaboy, and there was a cupboard in his office stuffed with Studio One master-tapes. Mark’s Disco Dub is its dub.



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’At its darkest and most driving. The opener cuts deep into jazz, its darting trumpet melodies sinking the impulsive and questing approach of On-The-Corner Miles into the nocturnal longing of Lift To The Scaffold. Dark is a monolithic steppers’ in slo-mo, dense and dread. Set to the soft throb of a four-to-the-floor kickdrum, third track Club is the album’s explosive heart, twelve minutes of heady Berlin techno; and in finale Yangissa a soft African brass polyphony is spiced with nyabinghi–style drums, deeply dubwise, for fourteen minutes playing out an intrigue between chaos and control. The group is clear and unanimous — this is their best yet.’

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“We started with the principle – the cosmic idea that we were taught by our father from a very young age – that the stars and planets make a sound, that deep in outer space there is audible harmony.”

With its cathedral-like, richly resonant acoustics, the new HBE album is a brilliant expression of this interplanetary principle. The album is by turns urgent and contemplative, funky and reflective, varied in its textures; but entirely of one piece. Underpinned by concepts of our earth’s place in the cosmos, held in place by meditation, swirling with notions of history, science, theology, ancestry, there is a rich conceptual brew here. But always, what talks loudest is the music. The album rings with what back in the 1950s the jazz critic Whitney Balliet called “the sound of surprise”. At a time when the phrase Spiritual Jazz threatens in some quarters to become a tired cliche, this is a record that makes you believe again in the genre’s validity.

Talking to Cid, one of the Ensemble’s two trombonists, one phrase recurs: “back to the beginning”. “We wanted to go back to the beginning, when we were kids, real young, and our father would wake us up at 5 AM to practice for two hours before breakfast.” One outcome – initially unplanned but subsequently embraced – is that unlike their two previous albums on Honest Jon’s, this is an album without a drummer. “When we started, as Wolf Pack, just brothers on the street with our horns, there wasn’t a kit in sight.” Book Of Sound retains plenty of rhythmic heft, but the absence of a drummer opens up space for a notably varied instrumental palette. Acoustic guitar, piccolo, synthesiser, alto sax – none of them typical HBE Instruments – all have their place on the album. Most striking perhaps are the vocal lines that thread through the album and give it a palpable warmth. “In Wolf Pack, we rapped and played, this time we took it a step further.”

Sessions were recorded in Brooklyn and Chicago, and brilliantly mixed at Abel Garibaldi’s studio in the Loop (“Abel was like a musician on this record”), and it’s the Hypnotic’s hometown that permeates. For Cid this is a deeply Chicago record: “it’s got the vibe of the lake, the vibe of the prairies opening up to the west”. It also has the vibe of those Sun Ra Arkestra albums recorded in Chicago in the 1950s, and – of course - the Phil Cohran albums from the 1960s.

It’s Phil Cohran (the father of all seven members of the Ensemble and their first teacher, and not just in music) who is the album’s guiding spirit. For Cid it’s a major regret that, in the months before their father’s death early in 2017, Phil was not well enough to play on the album. “He loved the whole idea, and we had the perfect place for his zither”. But Book Of Sound is a magnificent testament to their Cohran legacy. “You know, it’s tough trying to satisfy everybody with our music. It’s hard enough satisfying ourselves, let alone the jazz scene, the hip hop guys, what have you. With this album we just dropped all that as a consideration, and tuned into deeper principles.”’


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Killer dubbed out House version

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Meditative, absorbing dance music in true Moritz style — at times seemingly transfixed by its own elements, and minimal almost to vanishing-point, but quickly back ticking, kicking and amassing, with the lethal dubwise density of the classic Berlin sound. Twelve minutes long, trenchant and forbidding but sharply alive, the dub itself is a kind of deep Fort-Da gambit which scoops your brain out for a quick sluice, before replacing it slightly skewiff. Don't drop your guard because of the Tresor.



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Musically, this new stepper appears to swell out of thin air. Immense and minimal, the propulsive groove monstrous child of Krautrock is overlain during its twelve minutes with the blues abstraction of Tikiman's guitar, the swing and effects of Marc Muellbauer's double bass, Delay's digressive steel
percussion, and the otherworldly keys of Loderbauer and von Oswald. With characteristic intensity, (Digital Mystikz) Mala's rebuild ratchets up the drama and dread. A mounting barrage of bleeps rains down on a vicious, clopping drum pattern and steely synths. The bass is transfixing. An immensely powerful record.


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