The T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo & Leopold Yehouessi album is basically Fela if Fela was as good as everyone says he is

My first thought upon starting Ehye Wo Bo Dr. Paa Bobo International Band of Ghana was "Hey! Return of the Giant Slits!" There's a rubberiness to the bass here, and a slight dubbiness to the production that makes me think this is what people whose only exposure to African music is post-punk that takes influence from African music think African music might sound like, if not in structure than at least sonically - it's the rare album, and the rare non-soukous African album, that you can both say are produced in typical eighties style, and also brilliantly produced - it's still probably too mellow and too lacking in aggression and/or action to appeal much to said people, but it's still damn fine.

Cease Upon the Capital's first s/t album is an exercise is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, and doing a sucky thing and expecting it not suck - getting onto a band with ties to hardcore for being too formulaic is maybe One of Those Things You're Not Supposed To Do if you wanna' be an Eclectic Internet Wannabe Music Critic but the first two songs follow the same structure: bit that sounds like pop punk gone screamo, bit o'guitar that almost shoegazes, then back to a, then riff that bears a resemblance to good old fashioned hard rock. Repeat. Then on the third track they repeat some bits some more and add a lil post-rock flair in the middle and hey guess what that's as far as I got because I don't much like any of those things in my emo, and also it's just not well done at all. So I reviewed an album I hear a third of, so sue me.

Of the highlife albums I listened to yesterday, Fine Woman by Canadoes Super Stars of Ghana was easily the least entertaining, partially because the first track just went on and on, punctuated by vocal chatter and forced laughter in a language I don't speak. But even the grooves seemed stale.

If you thought atmospheric drum & bass was a crock of shit compared to the more bangin' varieties of the genre, then wait until you meet MINIMALIST d'n'b! Technically, DJ Krust's Genetic Manipulation e*coughit'slikefortyminuteslongthat'snotanepcough*p existed before that trend became an official subgenre it's easily the most minimalist piece of edm I think I've ever heard - because absolutely nothing happens and it doesn't. even. bang. If the Mad Professor and Patto Banton album was the poster child for Obscure Albums That FACT Put On a Best of the Decade List That Really Deserve Their Spot, this one is, uh, the same except slip a "don't" before "deserve." Imagine if Bull of Heaven made a d'n'b album. Really.

Hey remember how I hate abstract rap? Well I certainly did while listening to The Sanity Index by Sonic Sum!

The catchily-titled Yere Wo Ato Mu Ate Ebi Awe by Alex Konadu and the not-at-all-nonsensically-named One Man '1000' is just supreme - it's just excellent music: you can hear the bass right up front and clear, actually every instrument sounds great, though the guitars are, in typical highlife fashion, a teensy bit too far back in the mix, especially in relation to the vox - I'm not asking for, y'know, Shieldian swirling walls-of-sound but I'd like to not have to crane my neck slightly and narrow my eyes a touch to really HEAR what the guitarists are playing - but it's honestly almost weird and incredibly exciting to hear music that uses a completely typical Rock Standard 2 guitars/bass/drums/vox line-up to make music that has nothing whatsoever in common with any form of white Western music whatsoever - it shows both how ingenious humans can always be, being able to make such antithetical types of music with the same instruments, and also how terribly uncreative so much white music that relies on gtrdrmbsvx is - I'm not advocating Vamping Weekending but there's really no excuse for people doing new and exciting things even with the most banal and overused instrumentation - and then you think about people playing oboes and oud instead and wow music is infinite, human invention is infinite!

so yeah on that note that makes Spark Master Tape's decision to basically make artsy trap on the SWOUP Serengeti a little bit soul-crushing. But y'all know my ~trapinions~