zwei alltime-klassiker des northern soul back 2 back auf einer 7”: die erste soul-nummer des großen dean parrish von 1965, sowie die erste vinyl-reissue von j.b. troys “live on”.

it’s hard to get a handle on nigerian musicians nash dodoo, charlie cuul and jonas caulley. in 1980 they released an album of face-melting gospel boogie as the bml chapels. and in the same year, calling themselves the beta yama group, they put out free love, a belated love letter to san francisco’s summer of love and an album altogether focused on more worldly concerns. free love is a small slice of haight-ashbury transported to the polygram studios in lagos. ‘te revoir’ is mamas and papas jamming with sergeant pepper’s beatles. ‘free love’ offers a respectful nod towards je t’aime-era serge gainsbourg. sure, ‘revolution’ gets hard and funky and ‘rain’ flirts briefly with a calypso reggae sound, but the majority of the album is cheesecloth and flowers in your hair. insanely rare – and worth buying for the freaky cover art alone – free love is a funky, reverb heavy call for love, peace and sweet, sweet loving. what more could you want from an album?
(peter moore)

a bona-fide nigerian prince and probably the only musician to have ever played with fela kuti, miles davis and bob marley, eji oyewole combined african highlife with western jazz to create a hybrid so that was as smooth as it was funky. his first album, charity begins at home was an angry tirade against corruption in nigeria. me & you is his ‘relationship’ album, a brighter and happier set of songs that sees eji all loved up, presumably with the mysterious ‘cameleon’ featured on the cover. eji’s flute is no longer a strident voice raised in anger. instead, on ‘me & you’ and ‘i’m a dancer’ it is a playful line of seduction. on the wonky and woozy ‘eniafelamo’ his sax is a post-coital salutation. even the one political track, ‘long live nigeria’, is a loved up call for peace, progress and trust. chilled, assured and dexterious, me & you is a sophisticated showcase of eji oyewole’s chops. ‘this is the beginning of an atomic musical evolution,’ he declares on the cover. ‘brothers and sisters, stay cool.’
(peter moore)

how do you follow up a stone-cold afro funk classic like village boogie? simple. gather together some of the hottest players in nigeria, take them down to the phonodisk studios in ijebu igbo and let them loose on a bunch dancefloor fillers you spent the last four years ‘road testing’ in kaduna. and don’t forget to get lady franka and mariam pledge in on backing vocals. those girls know how to fire up a party. it helps, of course, if you’re steve ‘dudu’ black. steve had a god-given knack for writing combustible dance tunes and the contacts in the industry to get the likes of willy nfor, willy roy and felix lebarty to make them explode. from the opening track, ‘osasuima’, the heat never stops. on ‘no stopping me now’ and ‘ololufe/ stay the night’, it’s almost too hot to handle. polished in a studio in london while musical youth recorded pass the dutchie in the next room, happy birthday to u is the gift that keeps on giving – an irresistible blend of highlife, afro beat and afro funk that is guaranteed to start a party on any dance floor.
(peter moore)

kiki gyan’s star didn’t burn long, but it burned bright. drafted into the afro funk super group, osibisa, at 15, he was millionaire by 18 and regarded as one of the best keyboardists in the world by 21. ‘life was good, man,’ he told journalist kweku sakyi-addo. ‘too good!’. in 1983 he dived head first into the new york party scene. he took a lot of drugs, spent a lot of time in clubs and got together a team of crack local musicians to record feelin’ alright, his third and final solo album. all the kiki gyan trademark elements are present and correct. the album is unique a blend of highlife music with electronic funk and disco. ‘rosemary’ follows the formula most closely and was a hit across nigeria and ghana. but on ‘give it to me’, ‘love to love you’ and the title track, you’ll hear a slicker, boogie-influenced sound that has made feelin’ alright one of his most sought-after albums. kiki gyan would never hit such heights again. his addictions eventually took hold and he died aged 47, destitute and alone. feelin’ alright remains one of the brightest stars in his extraordinary constellation.
(peter moore)