Tony Allen Africa 70
No Accommodation For Lagos

Favorite Recordings proudly presents Voiciii, the 3rd and new album by Voilaaa, an immersive dip into its Afro-Disco universe spread across 14 tracks. Needless to say you’ll find in this new LP all the ingredients that made him famous: strong dancefloor-friendly festive bangers, irresistible funky arrangements and an undeniable sense of humor and irony. Bruno “Patchworks” Hovart, behind Voilaaa, is as often surrounded by amazing vocal featurings from previous LP’s regulars (Pat Kalla, Lass) but also new voices you may already have heard on its recent EPs (David Walters, Rama Traore, Ayuune Suule), as well as the saxophonist Boris Pokora. The LP is also an occasion to pay tributes to major artists of the African sound, such as Fela Kuti (on “Water No Get Enemy”), or Manu Dibango (“Manu Écoute Ça” and “Tenor Jam For Manu”). Since the release of Voilaaa’s previous LP’s Des Promesses and On Te L’Avait Dit and their massive international support, the Voilaaa Soundsystem did travel through the world to deliver its message of infectious joy and groove, from Equator to Thailand, from Kazakhstan to the infamous French “Fête de l’Huma”. Now you know: Voilaaa is everywhere and Voiciii (“here it is”) their new album.

Afro-Soul Holy Grail by the “Soul Brother from Benin“, featuring the famous “Vis à Vis” band from Ghana and recorded in Kumasi in 1979.Stanislas Tohon aka Papy Grande was born in the “Country of the kings” (Benin), in Abomey 1955. He’s “Chevalier de la legion d’honneur” in Benin for his brilliant musical career.The famous soul singer from Cotonou started his musical career at this age of 9, played with the greatest such as Gnonnas Pedro and recorded almost 35 albums. Influenced by the traditional “Tchingoume“ music , he invented his own rhythm called “Tchink Système”, a mix of soul and Beninese traditional rhythm . Dans le Tchink Système is an original 4 tracks album recorded in Ghana on 24 analog tracks channel with the incredible “Vis à Vis Band”, completed with the song “Africa“, a rare version of his first 7inch which he recorded a year before with “Les Satelites” from Cotonou. Sang in Fon, his native language from Benin, this album is a soulful call for peace and unity in Africa, a real definition of Afro Soul music! This extremely rare and obscure record is now remastered and strictly limited to 1000 copies.Enjoy!

African, funky, sarcastic, bewitching, green, ecstatic: these words collide to describe Vaudou Game and all of them are true.Noussin is the fourth album of the french Afro Funk band. Forced into lockdown, like much of the planet, Peter Solo and his Vaudou Game had no choice but to retreat into the studio. A reunion to once again invoke the spiritual forces of the Voodoo Deities. A reunion that was Initially imagined for an EP…yet these spiritual forces behind that imagination yearned for something more, and as we all know, these forces are impossible to push away once they have decided to stay. Under the strain enforced by the current socioeconomic climate, as much as by the environmental peril that faces us all today - they diverted the course of the groove towards daring new vibrations. Without extinguishing or diminishing its highly communicative power, they released Vaudou Game from its origins of pure Afro-Funk to gradually engage into compositions which crystallized themselves into tones resembling more rock than funk. On this fourth album, with an entirely revisited line-up, Peter Solo separates for the first time in his career from his brassy guard, leaving saxophone, trumpet and trombone outside to invite an arsenal of keyboards to define, with him, this new voodoo sound. A sound, as usual, built on vintage and precise analogical material - grime even on the white side of the tape, a blunt instrument used to blanket anything that strived to shine too much in the mix.Graced with tapered guitars stringing out rhythmic bumps or withdrawing a few beats to indulge in infectious solos, this album is boisterously alive with vintage 70's Funk, infused with a few digressions into other ethers of the funk timeline, nicking different sounds and frequencies to render the black and white keys of an inspired keyboard to reach new euphoric levels of melodic acidity. Tearing off the enigmatic mask to reveal his true face: on a few titles, Peter Solo ventures outside of his sacred voodoo range to reconnect with his London years, these titles feature small nods to the time he spent in “The Smoke” where the incantations of British music culture were written within him.Noussin which means “Stay strong” in Mina, a dialect spoken in the south-west of Togo. Noussin, a message of hope as much as a call to come together to weather the turmoil and to come out better on the other side. Don’t let them grind you down…Noussin!

Vaudou Game is a contemporary live band of 6 members playing an authentic Togolese funk based on voodoo chants scales, and led by Peter Solo, a singer and composer born in Aného-Glidji (Togo), birthplace of the Guin tribe and place of the voodoo culture. He was raised with those traditional values of human and environment respect.Apiafo is a 12 tracks album, entirely recorded, mixed and mastered with old analog tapes, and played with vintage instruments, recalling the sound of bands like Poly-Rythmo De Cotonou or El Rego! Peter Solo invited his uncle, Roger Damawuzan, famous pioneer of the 70’s soul scene in Togo, to sing on “Pas Contente” & “Wrong Road“. The result of their collaboration is without a doubt two amazing future dancefloor classics! The idea of integrating these haunting lines, sung in honor of the Divinities, to an energetic 70's Afro-funk style, was, in Peter Solo's mind, an obvious extension of the analogy he found between the voodoo tradition and trance inducers such as Soul, Funk, as well as the Rhythm ‘N Blues of James Brown or Otis Redding.Vaudou Game will be touring all over the world next year promoting this new Afro-Soul classic album!

Ebo Taylor “Twer Nyame” is being reissued on vinyl by Comet Records, pressed on high quality vinyl, with label designs and artwork as per the original release.Originally released in 1978 on Philips-West African-Records. Classic highlife sounds; uptempo grooves, vocals, tons of percussion, guitar, horns and organ lines. Featuring the stand-out ‘Atwer Abroba’.Ebo Taylor is one of Ghana's finest producer/arrangers.Taylor was heavily influential in the unique sound that emerged from the country in the 70's; a combination of traditional Ghanaian with Afro-beat, jazz, and funk rhythms.He worked with bands including Stargazers Band, Broadway Dance Band, Black Star Highlife Band (with Teddy Osei and Sol Amarfio who later joined Osibisa), Apagya Show Band and fellow musicians C.K.Mann, Gyedu-Blay Ambolley and the legendary Pat Thomas.

Continuing his journey, the former member of Egypt 80 and last trumpeter of the Black President Fela Kuti releases hissecond album: APP (Accumulation of Profit & Power).Muyiwa Kunnuji and his band Osemako, which has been extensively recasted since Moju Ba O - which had already laid the foundations of his afroclassicbeat - have had quite an evolution, and are eager to share a recipe that has been patiently elaborated and stewed, both on stage and in the studio.A complex mix of deep musical and cultural heritages as well as a claimed and combative Pan-African culture, APP sets the bar still one step higher in the message, but also and especially in terms of composition and polyrhythms. Inspired by Western African highlife as well as the purest afrobeat of the Afrika 70 era, and even incorporating elements of South African marabi or Central African soukous, the whole does not sound less perfectly personal, tailored, with a natural and disconcerting ease.But this easiness is only an apparent as Muyiwa devoted himself body and soul to the composition and harmony during the gestation of these tunes so widely inspired and yet intensely personal.APP will thus delight fans of African music in the broad sense as well as connoisseurs, and just as much fans of funk grooves or jazzy solos; it is a deeply plural album. Multi-influenced, multicultural, multilingual, a slice of life as much as an initiatory journey, on which hovers the spectre of Covid, which has also largely inspired this second ‘effort’. Standing against absurd sanitary rules or the accumulation of profits by the powerful of this world and other pseudo-philanthropists, APP, again, reminds us of the great Fela, as much by the use of an acronym to entitle the album as by the themes addressed or the mixing of genres. A warrior album, filled and full of revendications, but also of calls for open-mindedness. An intensely human, sincere, combative album, and however radically enthusiastic and optimistic.