Playing ndingo, genbri, guitars, suling, nay, rewab, rabab and shakuhachi, and singing.

The exciting Cairo-based project of Alvarius B (Alan Bishop from Sun City Girls and Sublime Frequencies), with Cherif El Masri, Aya Hemeda and Sam Shalabi. Fully-fledged, dark, Middle-Eastern-flavoured psych-folk.

The A is a fully-orchestrated version of two Alvarius B. tracks (one from the Sun City Girls’ 330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond the Rig Veda LP); the B is a Morrocan folk cover sung in Arabic by Aya Hemeda.

The tussling vegetables in Mal Dean’s cover-sketch somehow befit perfectly this extraordinary duo of Bailey and the great Dutch drummer Han Bennink. Recorded in London in 1972, Incus 9 was their second record (after an ICP in 1969), becoming a blueprint and inspiration for generations of free-improvisers. It is paired here with a brilliant session from the following year, with the same power and friendly combativeness, and oodles of creativity, technique and humour. It’s obvious how much they loved playing together.

The bullion-clad masterpiece of these pioneers of Nigerian Funk and Afrobeat at their deepest and heaviest — tearing, wailing, mid-70s funk, heady with spirituality. Superbad from start to finish, no let-up.