Red Snapper:
Hyena:
Lo Recordings:
Out September 15th:
CD/LP/DD
★★★★★★★★☆☆
Inspired by cultish Afrique movie 'Touki Bouki' and with both feet firmly in the '70s funk-fusion ball-park, Hyena is Red Snapper back with cinematic vengeance. After many years mining a part-experimental, part-club seam at the hands of Warp Records, the band hooked up with the slightly more like-minded Lo Recordings (responsible for releases by Four Tet, Grimes etc).
After a brief respite, Red Snapper return with their best album for a decade. Opening gambit Card Trick is a rubbery hybrid of Buraka Som Sistema, Talking Heads circa Speaking In Tongues and Bill Laswell's less-experimental remixes and solo outings on Axiom. A similar heavy Afro-beat permeates the chest-popping rhythms of the sparse Walking Man, before the more soulful Village Tap draws you into an underworld of old Blaxploitation films or a couple of early episodes of a Quinn Martin production. Not unlike A Certain Ratio's '90s period or the kind of mood found on early Brand New Heavies albums, Village Tap is one of the many highlights here.
Things get decidedly richer and more textured as the album continues - Herder Can Ride would give Youssou N'Dour a run for his money, rhythm-wise, while Wonky Bikes utilises balafon-style percussion and ghostly hooks throughout that glue the first half of the album together.
Lassoo evokes Jah Wobble's global approach to music construct before the harmonious, almost choral, Mambetty calms things down rather like a twilight walk across a dusty canyon or, better still, the Serengeti. In fact very little of Hyena will have you reaching for the volume button apart from the closing track No Exit which is an oddball slice of motorik sax-driven jazz-funk that doesn't quite sit with the rest.
By turns exciting, thrilling, white-knuckle even, Hyena also has enough soporific charm to lure in casual world-beat aficionados and left-of-centre funk-heads alike.
Hyena:
Lo Recordings:
Out September 15th:
CD/LP/DD
★★★★★★★★☆☆
After a brief respite, Red Snapper return with their best album for a decade. Opening gambit Card Trick is a rubbery hybrid of Buraka Som Sistema, Talking Heads circa Speaking In Tongues and Bill Laswell's less-experimental remixes and solo outings on Axiom. A similar heavy Afro-beat permeates the chest-popping rhythms of the sparse Walking Man, before the more soulful Village Tap draws you into an underworld of old Blaxploitation films or a couple of early episodes of a Quinn Martin production. Not unlike A Certain Ratio's '90s period or the kind of mood found on early Brand New Heavies albums, Village Tap is one of the many highlights here.
Things get decidedly richer and more textured as the album continues - Herder Can Ride would give Youssou N'Dour a run for his money, rhythm-wise, while Wonky Bikes utilises balafon-style percussion and ghostly hooks throughout that glue the first half of the album together.
Lassoo evokes Jah Wobble's global approach to music construct before the harmonious, almost choral, Mambetty calms things down rather like a twilight walk across a dusty canyon or, better still, the Serengeti. In fact very little of Hyena will have you reaching for the volume button apart from the closing track No Exit which is an oddball slice of motorik sax-driven jazz-funk that doesn't quite sit with the rest.
By turns exciting, thrilling, white-knuckle even, Hyena also has enough soporific charm to lure in casual world-beat aficionados and left-of-centre funk-heads alike.