Who Is This America? [Bonus Track] (2004)

On its first album for the illustrious Ropeadope label, the Brooklyn-based Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra (now shortened to simply Antibalas) continues to mine the deep sonic and political fields first breached by the late Fela Kuti. This is deep funk Afro-beat, full of deep, fat horns, trance-like pumping bass, snaky guitars, and hypno-groove percussion. In addition to the orchestra which numbers 14 pieces, the band adds another ten guests in various places and extrapolates its chunky, funky, Afro-beat sound by grafting it ... Read More

On its first album for the illustrious Ropeadope label, the Brooklyn-based Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra (now shortened to simply Antibalas) continues to mine the deep sonic and political fields first breached by the late Fela Kuti. This is deep funk Afro-beat, full of deep, fat horns, trance-like pumping bass, snaky guitars, and hypno-groove percussion. In addition to the orchestra which numbers 14 pieces, the band adds another ten guests in various places and extrapolates its chunky, funky, Afro-beat sound by grafting it onto Latin beats and, in the longer pieces, elliptical modal considerations. The album begins with the manifesto "Who Is This America Dem Speak of Today?" Stuttering guitar lines insist on ushering in the quantum rhythms before the horns kick it into pure hypno-groove. Amayo's vocals are pure righteousness as the track winds back on itself three times before it eclipses at 12 minutes. The wildest thing here is saxophonist Stuart Bogie's "Indictment," with its jagged-edged, hard shadowy funk where muted trombones, keyboards, and even strings collide in a loose-backboned twist-o-flex groove before the vocals come in to lay down the law with rage and authority. The final two cuts on the set -- "Elephant," with its entwined organ, synth-bass, and horn lines that become a ghostly, post midnight Afro-Latin dance jam, and B. Mann's killer dub-inflected "Sister" account for over half-an-hour of the disc's total playing time. The two are consistent in the way they gradually and purposefully unfold into labyrinthine considerations that are deeply textured, multivalent exercises in intervallic groove and shimmer, allowing the band's jazz pedigree to articulate itself more fully. Antibalas may have begun its recording career by paying tribute to the nearly overwhelming influence of Fela, but as this disc attests, the band has been carving out its own space from other traditions as well, and has developed a grand woven-basket design that bears the group's signature exclusively. [The CD reissue in 2010 expands the track selection to eight with the addition of a previously unissued cut: a Scott Harding-produced jam entitled "Money Talks." The iTunes version contains this and another exclusive in the cut "Paz," and, available from the band's and label's websites is a deluxe edition which contains a CD, a download coupon, and a reprint of the original Ropeadope "Running Man" T-shirt] ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi Read Less

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2010, Ropeadope UPC: 020286154594 CD See All