┌─┐ ┌─┬─┐
││├┬┬┤├┼┘│
│┌┘┤││├┤┌┤
_________________________ Psychedelic Cyber Zone ______________│├┐│┌┤ │││_____
└┴─┴─┴─┴─┘
Artist.....: Ex-Centric Sound System
Album......: Afro_Riddim_Sessions_Vol.1
Type.......: Album
Genre......: Reggae
Style......: Reggae
Label......: Six Degrees
CatalogNr..: BRG142
Url........: http://sixdegreesrecords.com/
Rel.date...: 14.12.2007
Str.date...: 11.04.2006
Source.....: CDDA
Grabber....: EAC 0.95 beta 3
Encoder....: Lame 3.97 -V 2 --vbr-new
Quality....: VBRkbps / 44.1kHz / Joint-Stereo
Tracks.....: 1
Size.......: 64.41 MB
Length.....: 52:14
______________________________________________________________________________
Tracklist
01. Ex-Centric Sound System vs.Richi Bless - Intro 00:45
02. Ex-Centric Sound System vs. Kukcha Knox - Things That You Do 03:12
03. Ex-Centric Sound System vs. Anthony B - Need Love Here 03:38
04. Ex-Centric Sound System vs. Al Pancho/Excaliber - 2Nayabingy Order 03:36
05. Ex-Centric Sound System vs. Doniki - Stranger in Da City 02:39
06. Ex-Centric Sound System vs. Kulcha Knox - More Love 04:08
07. Ex-Centric Sound System vs. President Brown - Babylon by Bus 04:00
08. Ex-Centric Sound System - Six PM Moonrise Dub 01:20
09. Ex-Centric Sound System vs. Richi Bless - Livity 03:50
10. Ex-Centric Sound System vs. Doniki - Heard it on the News 03:59
11. Ex-Centric Sound System vs. Jah Mason - Boboman Warn 03:40
12. Ex-Centric Sound System vs. Kulcha Knox - The 1 00:27
13. Ex-Centric Sound System vs. Kulcha Knox - Put on the Dancing Shoe 03:49
14. Ex-Centric Sound System vs. Lisa Dainjah - Hardcore Reggae
Ambassador 03:02
15. Ex-Centric Sound System vs Chezidek - Wildest Dreams 03:41
16. Ex-Centric Sound System - Wildest Dub 03:39
17. Ex-Centric Sound System vs. Ras Haile Malekot - Blood By Blood 02:50
Total Time: 52:14
______________________________________________________________________________
Release Notes
Ex-Centric-Sound System presents an original Electro/-African vibe, With
their High energy performance, the musicians &dancers, create a new breed of
sizzling beats &grooves, Dubby bass lines with authentic African
instrumentation & chants, amplified with the latest technology -live on stage
Led by bassist/producer Yossi Fine and master musician/choreographer Nana
Dadzie.
Ex-Centric Sound System broke onto the music scene in 2000 with their debut
Electric Voodooland which was called "spiritual food in the pop-music desert"
(Vibe) and "fostering some arresting transglobal fusions" (Chicago Reader),
among many other critical accolades. The album, which was on hip-hop label
Loud Records, drew fans across many boundaries.
Ex-Centric Sound System was founded by Israeli bass player Yossi Fine. His
band includes musicians from all over Africa. Yossi Fine wanted lots of bass
on this album. "The first time you stand next to the sound system trucks at
Carnival in Trinidad it is unbelievable," exclaims Fine. "On one truck alone,
the amount of low end sound, the number of speakers: it's huge! That is what
we tried to create on the album," he says referring to their latest release,
West Nile Funk, released on July 13, 2004.
This former bassist for David Bowie, Lou Reed, and Me'Shell Ndegocello wants
you to feel the bass in your body. "When you stand in front of the trucks, you
can't help it. The way you dance changes," says Fine. "You stand there once
and you will be converted." Ex-Centric Sound System broke onto the music scene
in 2000 with their debut Electric Voodooland which was called "spiritual food
in the pop-music desert" (Vibe) and "fostering some arresting transglobal
fusions" (Chicago Reader), among many other critical accolades. The CD, which
was on hip-hop label Loud Records, drew fans across many boundaries.
Fine is joined by traditional Ghanaian musician-dancers Prince Nana Dadzie
and Miss Adevo, and Moroccan-Israeli drummer Michael Avgil"says the sound
system is a very important element in the African diaspora for gathering
people. "In Africa, they do it with drums," continues Fine, who was born in
Paris to a West Indian singer and an Israeli guitarist. "But in the Islands
they do it with these trucks."
But there are other ambitions for West Nile Funk, the band"s second
full-length release. "I am a DJ too," explains Fine. "I have spun world music
dance albums, but most of them are either too soft on beats or too soft on the
African element. People just get off the dance floor! Being a band with
Ghanaian dancers and musicians, when we play live, people dance. I wanted to
get that on record, capture the energy from our live show, but also create
something that is totally progressive. A new sound for the future."
It may take a few listens to absorb all the layers. Listen on a system with
good bass. Listen loud in a car and watch your mirrors bounce. Second, note
that Ex-Centric turns the idea of a sample on its head. Each track includes a
complete African song from start to finish, rather than small snippets
repeated throughout or looped. Third, see how the grooves are driven by live
bass and drums, with no guitar and very little in the way of keyboards. "This
is not electronic. It is us playing live," says Fine.
Next, listen to the tempo. "A lot of people are trying to do everything with
hip hop," Fine explains. "But generally African music is not suited for hip
hop. Dancers in Africa need to dance faster, to get into the trance element.
Our drummer plays Afrobeat but not in a "70s way. We want to take it into the
future. Just as Hip Hop took a bar or two of soul and repeated it, we do that
with Afrobeat. We go into a specific part of the beat and speed it up and play
it over and over. It"s modernizing that stuff."
The songs themselves alternate between traditional and modern. "The Original
Raga" is a Hutu wedding song. "Ebae" tells of Dadzie and Favouz"s experience
as Ghanaians living in Israel. The song includes some Hebrew. The over 50,000
West Africans living in Israel have their own neighborhoods and customs. Many
return to Africa with what they have learned about technology. Ex-Centric"s
forward-thinking musical essence parallels the technological boom being
experienced in Ghana right now. "Bring Your Calabash" is a call to party. "The
calabash [a hard-shelled gourd] is perfect for this. They play it and then
boom they flip it over and fill it with rice," recalls Fine. "I"ve seen it
many times in Israel."
"In the beginning, I just recorded any good musicians from Africa," says Fine
about the origins of the group. "But they didn"t end up in the band. "Alice in
Voodooland" includes some of those other guys." The horn sound comes from a
hunter from Burundi blowing and vocalizing through a pipe. He is joined by a
storyteller from Togo. And Nana rounds it out with a Ghanaian dancehall vocal.
"West Nile is everything west of the Nile. Not just West Africa but the
Caribbean and America too," Fine explains. "When we called our first album
Electric Voodooland, it was originally going to be Electric Motherland. But it
is everything that is Black. It"s the same with "Alice in Voodooland," but
this time the emphasis is more on the funk elements rather than the dub
element. We did the down-tempo dub element on the first album and we did not
want to repeat that. I wanted a different album altogether to go completely to
the future. We do not want to retro all the African things that have been
done. Our logo, the Sankofa, is a Ghanaian bird looking back at its egg, and
it means to look backwards in order to move forward. For this album, the
forward is extremely important."
Ex-Centric Sound System's new release 'West Nile Funk' got its name because
the musical ideas for the album come from anywhere west of the Nile river:
from West Africa, to the Caribbean to North America. The group members combine
modern funk and hip-hop with traditional ethnic music.
Not since Bassnectar has a band combined so many different musical sources
into such a compellingly coherent dance music whole. Ex-Centric Sound System
bassist and bandleader Yossi Fine starts out with a fusion of Jamaican and
African sounds, but brings in a variety of other elements, including musical
influences from Latin America, New Orleans, London and New York. Like the
group's 2004 release Electric Voodooland, Afro Riddim Sessions, Vol. 1 takes
those disparate elements and combines them into something simultaneously fresh
and familiar. Guest vocalists on this album include such modern roots legends
as Prezident Brown and Anthony B as well as an assortment of lesser-known
names, including Jah Maison, Doniki, and Kulcha Knox. Not everything works out
perfectly:
"1-2 Nayabingy Order" starts out brilliantly, but when the bass kicks in you
realize that the singer and the rhythm are in different keys; both the vocal
and the rhythm are excellent, but sadly, they don't actually fit together at
all. Much better are "Hardcore Reggae Ambassador," which features exquisite
toasting by Lisa Denja, the old-school jungle groove of "Put on the Dancing
Shoe" (featuring Kulcha Knox) and the album's spectacular centerpiece,
"Babylon by Bus," on which Prezident Brown earns his title. It's followed by a
very fine dub version. Overall, this album can be confidently recommended to
any fan of modern, adventurous reggae..
____________________________________________________ Psychedelic Cyber Zone __
est. 2001