Sometimes chance encounters can lead to the strangest outcomes.......

Late last year, whilst record shopping in a Buenos Aires Flea Market, we met a fellow British vinyl buyer who was just back from a trip to Southern Africa. He’d spent some time crate digging in Botswana of all places and whilst attending a gig, he was handed a cassette (remember those !) from a certain Bepu N’Gali. Knowing he was looking for a deal, it was duly passed onto International Feel (whom then had to swiftly purchase a cassette player) and we headed back to Uruguay for a listen.

Loving what we heard, we called the phone number scrawled on the back of the cassette and after quite a few attempts to connect (we’re nothing if not persistent !) we got to hear his story..........

Bepu was born in Gaborone (the capital of Botswana), to an Motswana father and Italian mother. He spent most of his childhood traveling around Africa following his fathers work and this included (as a teenager) a lengthy spell in Lagos, where he fell in love with the Afrobeat sound and culture and started collecting as many cassette tapes (yes, those again) as possible, whilst also learning bass guitar, organ and percussion.

Moving back to Botswana, he put together what he calls his ‘house band’, a collection of 12 musicians and set out to play as many gigs as possible in Botswana and South Africa. A lot of these gigs became glorified jam sessions and ‘I Travel to You’ is an edited down version of one such session.

Complemented by remixes from Todd ‘will his golden patch ever end ?’ Terje and a amazing dub mix from Tim ‘Love’ Lee, we also got Rune Lindbaek to remix Terje’s remix (confused yet ?) and have split the release over two pieces of vinyl, with the original and Terje’s mix on one and the two dub mixes on the second, to (hopefully) do justice to what could be, the start of really special recording career.


Early feedback

A great package - Ame

Will be playing with Saturday on BBC6 Music - Giles Peterson

Amazing strong package this of a great track. Tim Lee's Dub is awesome and Rune's remix of Terje's is great too - Jonnie Wilkes, Optimo

Absolutely love this - original and all the remixes. So great. - Twitch, Optimo

Fantastic, tune of the week on next week's Melodica for sure - Chris Coco