Various Artists: Holy Tongue, Beatrice Dillon, Lamin Fofana, LabourVarious Artists: Holy Tongue, Beatrice Dillon, Lamin Fofana, LabourVarious Artists: Holy Tongue, Beatrice Dillon, Lamin Fofana, LabourVarious Artists: Holy Tongue, Beatrice Dillon, Lamin Fofana, Labour

Various Artists: Holy Tongue, Beatrice Dillon, Lamin Fofana, Labour

Blinding, Mbalax drumming based, rework tour de force - recommended

The contribution from Holy Tongue is chase-the-devil steppers — thumping, clangorous, reverberating — super-charged with energy and atmosphere. From the off drummer Valentina Magaletti detonates a hard rain of small bombs, rounds of fire, ticking fuses. Musical co-ordinates are somewhere between classic On-U Sound crew like African Head Charge, The Mothmen, and Creation Rebel, and the experimental funk of the Pop Group and 23 Skidoo, at their funkiest. Thrillingly, the two dubs are increasingly deranged.

Adjusting the same wavelengths as her superb Workaround LP, Beatrice Dillon plays spaced-out, abstract synth-work against the bodily physicality of the ancient, shifting mbalax rhythms. The music is poised, mindful, tentative; but also limber, fleet, and magical.

Phantasmagorical and efflorescent, Lamin Fofana’s one-two is simply stunning. Both excursions are wide-open, beautiful, epic, and propulsive — the first mix is banging and headlong, the second more syncopated and serpentine — teeming with freshly sublime, funkdafied updates on Jon Hassell’s Fourth World possible musics.

The two parts of Labour’s Etu Keur Gui engage the same sequence of drum patterns (called bakks) from different perspectives. The duo performed portions of this piece at the opening ceremony of the Dakar Biennial in 2022, at the Grand National Theater, with thirty sabar players from the family of Doudou Ndiaye Rose. This Wolof phrase for the inner-court of a home — a meeting-place — doubles here as a metaphor for inner space on a metaphysical level; and Pan Sonic, Muslimgauze, Zoviet France, early Shackleton… all ghost across the threshold.

Various Artists: Holy Tongue, Beatrice Dillon, Lamin Fofana, Labour

Various Artists: Holy Tongue, Beatrice Dillon, Lamin Fofana, Labour

Blinding, Mbalax drumming based, rework tour de force - recommended

Holy Tongue: Dey Sey3:36AIFF € 1.75MP3 € 1.25
Holy Tongue: Dey Sey Dub3:06AIFF € 1.75MP3 € 1.25
Holy Tongue: Dey Sey Dub II3:36AIFF € 1.75MP3 € 1.25
Beatrice Dillon: 20206:17AIFF € 1.75MP3 € 1.25
Lamin Fofana: Niary Ngorong - Caprices Mix6:02AIFF € 1.75MP3 € 1.25
Lamin Fofana: Niary Ngorong - Itinerant Mix7:51AIFF € 1.75MP3 € 1.25
Labour: Etu Keur Gui Part 110:29AIFF € 1.75MP3 € 1.25
Labour: Etu Keur Gui Part 25:12AIFF € 1.75MP3 € 1.25

The contribution from Holy Tongue is chase-the-devil steppers — thumping, clangorous, reverberating — super-charged with energy and atmosphere. From the off drummer Valentina Magaletti detonates a hard rain of small bombs, rounds of fire, ticking fuses. Musical co-ordinates are somewhere between classic On-U Sound crew like African Head Charge, The Mothmen, and Creation Rebel, and the experimental funk of the Pop Group and 23 Skidoo, at their funkiest. Thrillingly, the two dubs are increasingly deranged.

Adjusting the same wavelengths as her superb Workaround LP, Beatrice Dillon plays spaced-out, abstract synth-work against the bodily physicality of the ancient, shifting mbalax rhythms. The music is poised, mindful, tentative; but also limber, fleet, and magical.

Phantasmagorical and efflorescent, Lamin Fofana’s one-two is simply stunning. Both excursions are wide-open, beautiful, epic, and propulsive — the first mix is banging and headlong, the second more syncopated and serpentine — teeming with freshly sublime, funkdafied updates on Jon Hassell’s Fourth World possible musics.

The two parts of Labour’s Etu Keur Gui engage the same sequence of drum patterns (called bakks) from different perspectives. The duo performed portions of this piece at the opening ceremony of the Dakar Biennial in 2022, at the Grand National Theater, with thirty sabar players from the family of Doudou Ndiaye Rose. This Wolof phrase for the inner-court of a home — a meeting-place — doubles here as a metaphor for inner space on a metaphysical level; and Pan Sonic, Muslimgauze, Zoviet France, early Shackleton… all ghost across the threshold.