2015

Super Mama Djombo orchestra, Guinee-Bissau, West Africa. All songs recorded in Lisbon, 1980 - re-mastered from the original reels. Six archive recordings are now available on vinyl for the first time.. Super Mama Djombo is one of West Africa's greatest roots orchestras and especially for the people of Guiné-Bissau. The band marked a new national identity and reinvented Portuguese Creole as a language of national unity.Before a nation can become real, it must first be imagined. It is fitting that Super Mama Djombo, the orchestra that has been the cultural stamp of Guinea-Bissau’s national identity since independence, was born in the fertile imagination of children.Hailing from a boy scout camp deep in the jungle of late 1960’s Guiné-Bissau, Super Mama Djombo’s founding musicians have come a long way to display their wonderful music to the world. Drummer Zé, singer Herculano, and original guitar players Gonçalo and Taborda picked the name Mama Djombo as an homage to a local goddess revered by independence fighters.Tiny Guiné Bissau is located between Senegal at its northern border and Guinée Conakry on its eastern and southern border. A former part of the mighty Mali empire, it was then one of the last African countries not to have gained its freedom from Portugal, its colonial power. Hence a fierce war for independence struck the country, until independence was eventually won over in 1974, after many years of suffering.In the early 1970’s, the Mama Djombo underground orchestra played mostly for secret political rallies supporting the PAIGC, the major Independence Movement for Guiné and Cabo Verde. Adriano Atchutchi became the bandleader after independence, bringing a book full of his songs. Atchutchi recruited singer Dulce Neves, adding creole sweetness to its already heady mix of juvenile enthusiasm, candid melodies and touches of luso-tropicalism.

London centric debut album from Floating Points with a host of guest musicians and vocalists. the label say " Sam Shepherd spent five years putting together Elaenia, juggling the production with his DJ commitments and his now-completed PhD in neuroscience.The album takes its inspiration from classical, jazz, electronic music, soul and Brazilian music, much of which can be heard in Shepherd's DJ sets. There's a long list of contributors, with Tom Skinner and Leo Taylor (drums), Rahel Debebe-Dessalegne and Layla Rutherford (vocals), Susumu Mukai (bass), Alex Reeve (guitar), Qian Wu and Edward Benton (violins), Matthew Kettle (viola) and Joe Zeitlin (cello) all featuring. Shepherd also provides some of the vocals.Shepherd's influence on the album extends to the cover art: he built his own harmonograph to create Elaenia's sleeve, using fibre optic cables that were connected to light sources and responded to bass drum hits and other sounds.Aside from a couple of early excursions on R2 Records and Planet Mu, Shepherd's solo material has come out through Eglo Records, the label he co-runs with Alex Nut. Records like Vacuum, Shepherd's breakthrough release in 2009, and 2011's Shadows, which scored a five-star review on RA, have cemented his reputation as a classy, inventive producer. On top of that he's also released music from his Floating Points Ensemble project, and produced some of Fatima's 2014 album, Yellow Memories. "