A bonkers, irrepressible amalgam of highlife, Twi rap, funk and disco, put over with the passion of a Prince record and the lo-fi charm of early Chicago house music.
The original cassette — self-released in Ghana and Canada in 1994 — was the inaugural post on the ATFA blog.

This started out a couple of years ago as a grounation drumming session above the old headquarters of the Mystic Revelation Of Rastafari, in Wareika Hill, Kingston, JA. Four funde, a repeta and a bass drum. Back in London, contributing flute and guitar, Kenrick Diggory unbottled the deep rootical psychedelia and sheer awe of Hunting — the Keith-Hudson-versus-Count-Ossie wonder of the world — and Tapes added electronics, a shot of Drum Song… and a giddily intense binghi dub.

‘Recorded across East London, South-East Kent and Snaresbrook Crown Court during what is described as “the UK media’s attempt at divining integrity from the orchestrated turbulence of Brexit”, with the record setting out to “juggle the documentation of this particular moment with the desire to discern motivation from despair”. World In Action takes in field recordings, woodwind freakouts and percussion from Valentina Magaletti amongst other elements’ (The Quietus).

D.K. and Low Jack.

‘SK Kakraba is a master of the gyil xylophone — fourteen wooden slats strung across calabash resonators. The silk walls of spiders’ egg sacs — ‘paapieye’ in the Lobi language — are stretched across holes in the gourds, giving each note a buzzy rattle. SK learned as a child from elders in his Lobi community in the far northwest reaches of Ghana.’
Beautiful, spare, mesmeric recordings — song cycles, dirges, improvisations based on traditional songs, original compositions — newly made.

Utterly infectious, bubbling, spare, playful house music from Ghana, steeped in neo-traditional idioms like gome and kpanlogo, as much as vintage Chicago acid and UK rave, highlife and hiplife, soca and dancehall. (As well as Accra pop radio stars like Crystal Waters, Inner Life and Rick Astley.) Over bass-heavy, percussive rhythms, Trotro sings, chants and raps in Twi and Ga, often like no one is listening. It’s impossible not to answer back.
Terrific, refreshing stuff.

Eight charged, intimate meditations by Julie Normal and Olivier Demeaux, playing a rickety ondes Martenot and an old church harmonium.
Gripping, detailed, stately improvisation — a bit like the ùrlars in classical bagpipe music — which nervily mixes the sternly doom-laden with precarious, other-worldly wonderment.
(The ondes Martenot is an amazing twentieth-century instrument — beloved by Messiaen, for example, and Varese. The theme-song of Star Trek is a vocal forgery of its sound. ‘J’aime cette fragilité qui côtoie la capacité de te décoller le tympan sur certaines fréquences inopinément,’ says Julie. ‘Je tiens une bombe dans les mains. J’aime son instabilité, son humanité.’)
Wood, breath, blood, eggshells… on the night of a purple moon.
Very warmly recommended.

Samo lived in Hong Kong for a bit. He rescued a dog and brought him back to Stockholm. He skates but that’s not him on the front. He put together one of the best very records on LIES but this four-tracker kills it dead. Ben UFO’s been rinsing it. The dog’s name is Denzil.

None other than Blawan on his lonesome ownsome — after collaborations with Pariah as Karenn, and Surgeon as Trade — returning to the blood-drenched scene of his heinous Why They Hide Their Bodies.
New name, new sound; heavier and slower than his Ternesc output. The title track is the banger. Acid techno — deliberate, widescreen and ominous.

Lovely, hypnotic, rocking peulh music from Dilly commune, Mali, near the border with Mauritania (and the same family grouping as the celebrated singer Inna Baba Coulibaly). Duelling ngonis, calabash, flute, dashes of electric guitar; newly recorded.

A cosmic, percussive jam and bitter-sweet electroid house — both veering sharply into dark, steely, dubwise self-harm. Allegedly the fiftieth utterance of our favourite dance music label in the world. Hats off! More worries!

You can’t make sense of this, clicking through mp3s, on tin-pan computer speakers. Put the record on, though, and set the controls for the heart of the bloke next door, and it’s terrific. The drum-less, throbbing, droning, wailing, sawing, twinkling reconnaissance of Nothing, with massive, unnerving swoops, throttling and surges.
Beatrice Dillon and Kassem Mosse.
Great photos by Anne Tetzlaff on the sleeve.

DJ Nobu & NHK yx Koyxen.

Kassem Mosse worries.