First published in Songlines Magazine issue 206, April 2025.
Black Flower
Kinetic
Sdban Ultra (40 mins)
Kinetic is the sixth album from Belgian five-piece Black Flower, and their sound is rightly evolving with their experience. The Ethio-jazz that characterised previous releases is more subtle here, and it is joined by intriguing influences from Bulgarian and Arabic music – the former especially lends itself to the band’s intricate style. All these sounds are united by a free-flowing, ecstatic jazz that works equally well in tightly-arranged interlocking melodies or exciting solos, absorbing the depth of dub and the groove of funk.
The production on this album is particularly impressive. The soundfield is luscious in a way that rewards headphone listening: melody lines and interesting little flourishes and effects crop up all around, but it manages to still sound surprisingly light and uncrowded. Each line and rhythm and sound feels very intentional in its placing in time and space. Together with Black Flower’s musical feats, this production makes Kinetic a joy to listen to.
This blog is a compendium of my music writing throughout the years. I try to post updates about a month after first publication, but I'm often very behind - please bear with me!
Friday, 7 March 2025
Jawari - Road Rasa
First published in Songlines Magazine issue 206, April 2025.
Jawari
Road Rasa
Vadi Records (53 mins)
Following up an impressive 2021 solo debut Vignettes, British sitarist Tommy Khosla introduces their ensemble Jawari, together with saxophone, guitars and percussion, completed by poetry from Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay and featuring a cadre of international friends. The collective is ambitious in the number and range of its influences – Road Rasa is a journey through jazz, lo-fi hip-hop, spoken-word, Indian classical, electronica, Latin, soul, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic music… even the track titles themselves are eclectic, using at least seven writing systems across the 16 tracks, by my count. The music is enjoyable; it’s obviously crafted by a bunch of talented and enthusiastic artists, and spans a range of intensities and moods. I do think this first album suffers from the same difficulty as a lot of these ‘all the influences’ projects, in that it’s quite hard to pin down – the eclecticism sometimes obscures what they want their sound to say. This is a promising project, and a tighter focus may take Jawari’s music to the next level in the future.
Jawari
Road Rasa
Vadi Records (53 mins)
Following up an impressive 2021 solo debut Vignettes, British sitarist Tommy Khosla introduces their ensemble Jawari, together with saxophone, guitars and percussion, completed by poetry from Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay and featuring a cadre of international friends. The collective is ambitious in the number and range of its influences – Road Rasa is a journey through jazz, lo-fi hip-hop, spoken-word, Indian classical, electronica, Latin, soul, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic music… even the track titles themselves are eclectic, using at least seven writing systems across the 16 tracks, by my count. The music is enjoyable; it’s obviously crafted by a bunch of talented and enthusiastic artists, and spans a range of intensities and moods. I do think this first album suffers from the same difficulty as a lot of these ‘all the influences’ projects, in that it’s quite hard to pin down – the eclecticism sometimes obscures what they want their sound to say. This is a promising project, and a tighter focus may take Jawari’s music to the next level in the future.
Tuesday, 25 February 2025
Press release: Ukandanz - Evil Plan
First written as a press release for the album for Ballantyne Communications.
Ukandanz
Evil Plan
Compagnie 4000 (28 mins)
This ain’t yer same old Ethiojazz. Ukandanz have pioneered the sound of Ethiopian crunch – at once soul and heavy metal, jazz and punk, and indisputably Ethiopian – and they’ve perfected it too. A Lyon-based quartet of complex rhythms, screaming saxophone and distorted bass thrums unite under the honeyed voice Asnaké Gebreyes, stalwart singer of the buzzing Addis Ababa scene that he still calls home. Asnaké’s Amharic-language vocals stir the soulful sweetness of Ethiopia’s classic pop into the band’s beefy, bold and intelligently aggressive style.
It’s a refreshingly unexpected synergy that has gained plaudits ranging from revered Éthiopiques producer Francis Falceto to comedian and music obsessive James Acaster. Channelling musical powerhouses as diverse as Ethiopian singer Tilahoun Gessesse and the legendary Black Sabbath, Ukandanz have been not-so-quietly making waves for the past 15 years – now they pay tribute to these musical heroes without imitation, only surprises.
Ukandanz were founded as a four-piece in the mid-2000s in France by bassist / guitarist Damien Cluzel and saxophonist Lionel Martin. But there was something missing, an essential spark that would transform their sound and take them to the next level. That spark was the golden tones of Addis Ababa soul singer Asnaké Gebreyes, a connection made by Falceto himself. Asnaké had been a staple on the Addis scene since he was 16 – he moved from his small home city of Kibre Mengist to earn his stripes as part of the legendary Police Orchestra alongside future stars Getatchew Mekurya and Hirut Bekele, before breaking out into stardom in his own right in the 1980s and later even contributing to Éthiopiques Vol. 15: Jump to Addis. He was a world away from the Ukandanz style, but his acrobatic, flexible voice was a perfect fit, and the connection was clear: “He didn’t know about rock music, about Sabbath, about Iron Maiden, but he has that same energy! It’s like the traditional musicians: it’s not rock, but they’re really rocking,” says Cluzel. And he’s no stranger to collaboration, having worked with Ethiopian legends Getatchew Mekurya and Mohammed Jimmy Mohammed, as well as Dutch jazz-punk collective The Ex and drum experimentalist Han Benninck. With Asnaké on the team, the four became five in 2010, and they’ve not looked back. The musicians live a continent apart, swapping artistic interrogations back-and-forth via WhatsApp, bashing rough-hewn arrangements into shape before polishing them through live tours and studio jams.
Rather than taking obvious cues from the well-known Ethiopian composer Mulatu Astatke like so many bands before them, they instead look to the country’s most beloved musicians – the soul superstars of the 1960s and 1970s. Icons such as Tilahoun Gessesse, Getatchew Kassa and Muluken Melesse are held up as the pantheon of pop music. But Ukandanz aren’t interested in faithful covers or the meaningless meanderings of Westerners trying to make Ethiopian music. “We don’t imitate and we don’t want to make the folklorical fusion shit. Ethiopians play Ethiopian music better than we can.” So the musicians do what they do best, creating an angular, angry math-punk, building complex polyrhythmic and polymetrical tensions based on jazz and allowing Asnaké to work his magic over the top, the two styles converging in the use of the kiñit – the iconic Ethiopian pentatonic scales that makes the music so distinctive.
Now after 15 years as a five-piece, Ukandanz are looking back to their heroes and sources of inspiration of generations past, and finding in them important meanings for the modern day. This is clearest in their intriguing cover of Black Sabbath’s 1970 protest song ‘War Pigs’. As well as hearing the musical relationship in the pentatonic feel and raw, sometimes mysterious energy, Asnaké particularly connected with the song’s anti-war lyrics, which resonate with Ethiopia’s current situation locked in a civil conflict since 2018. Sabbath’s lyrics are translated into Amharic and sung with a keening, melismatic passion. Such politically-charged statements can be dangerous in today’s Ethiopia, but some songs are too important to keep quiet.
On either side of the Black Sabbath classic are two songs associated with the kings of Ethiopian soul. ‘Yene Felagote’ (My Interest) was made famous by Tilahoun Gessesse, and Asnaké absolutely explodes out of the gates to open the album while Martin’s tenor sax bridges the conceptual gap between rock guitar and the sound of traditional Ethiopia, the masenko fiddle. Getatchew Kassa’s song ‘Lewsedesh Andken’ (One Day I Will Take You) is transformed by layers of cross-rhythms, spiky saxophone and funky organ grooves providing space for Asnaké’s charismatic strut. Both are love songs on their surface, but their lyrics are full of double entendre and semantic obfuscations, hiding multiple layers of deep meaning. This playful and poetic treatment is a powerful form of Ethiopian expression known as semena werk, wax and gold: entertaining words with profound significance at their core. Ukandanz make their music in the same way – complexities, contradictions and confluences interweave into a vibrant and effervescent eruption of unique Ethio-European noise.
Ukandanz
Evil Plan
Compagnie 4000 (28 mins)
This ain’t yer same old Ethiojazz. Ukandanz have pioneered the sound of Ethiopian crunch – at once soul and heavy metal, jazz and punk, and indisputably Ethiopian – and they’ve perfected it too. A Lyon-based quartet of complex rhythms, screaming saxophone and distorted bass thrums unite under the honeyed voice Asnaké Gebreyes, stalwart singer of the buzzing Addis Ababa scene that he still calls home. Asnaké’s Amharic-language vocals stir the soulful sweetness of Ethiopia’s classic pop into the band’s beefy, bold and intelligently aggressive style.
It’s a refreshingly unexpected synergy that has gained plaudits ranging from revered Éthiopiques producer Francis Falceto to comedian and music obsessive James Acaster. Channelling musical powerhouses as diverse as Ethiopian singer Tilahoun Gessesse and the legendary Black Sabbath, Ukandanz have been not-so-quietly making waves for the past 15 years – now they pay tribute to these musical heroes without imitation, only surprises.
Ukandanz were founded as a four-piece in the mid-2000s in France by bassist / guitarist Damien Cluzel and saxophonist Lionel Martin. But there was something missing, an essential spark that would transform their sound and take them to the next level. That spark was the golden tones of Addis Ababa soul singer Asnaké Gebreyes, a connection made by Falceto himself. Asnaké had been a staple on the Addis scene since he was 16 – he moved from his small home city of Kibre Mengist to earn his stripes as part of the legendary Police Orchestra alongside future stars Getatchew Mekurya and Hirut Bekele, before breaking out into stardom in his own right in the 1980s and later even contributing to Éthiopiques Vol. 15: Jump to Addis. He was a world away from the Ukandanz style, but his acrobatic, flexible voice was a perfect fit, and the connection was clear: “He didn’t know about rock music, about Sabbath, about Iron Maiden, but he has that same energy! It’s like the traditional musicians: it’s not rock, but they’re really rocking,” says Cluzel. And he’s no stranger to collaboration, having worked with Ethiopian legends Getatchew Mekurya and Mohammed Jimmy Mohammed, as well as Dutch jazz-punk collective The Ex and drum experimentalist Han Benninck. With Asnaké on the team, the four became five in 2010, and they’ve not looked back. The musicians live a continent apart, swapping artistic interrogations back-and-forth via WhatsApp, bashing rough-hewn arrangements into shape before polishing them through live tours and studio jams.

Rather than taking obvious cues from the well-known Ethiopian composer Mulatu Astatke like so many bands before them, they instead look to the country’s most beloved musicians – the soul superstars of the 1960s and 1970s. Icons such as Tilahoun Gessesse, Getatchew Kassa and Muluken Melesse are held up as the pantheon of pop music. But Ukandanz aren’t interested in faithful covers or the meaningless meanderings of Westerners trying to make Ethiopian music. “We don’t imitate and we don’t want to make the folklorical fusion shit. Ethiopians play Ethiopian music better than we can.” So the musicians do what they do best, creating an angular, angry math-punk, building complex polyrhythmic and polymetrical tensions based on jazz and allowing Asnaké to work his magic over the top, the two styles converging in the use of the kiñit – the iconic Ethiopian pentatonic scales that makes the music so distinctive.
Now after 15 years as a five-piece, Ukandanz are looking back to their heroes and sources of inspiration of generations past, and finding in them important meanings for the modern day. This is clearest in their intriguing cover of Black Sabbath’s 1970 protest song ‘War Pigs’. As well as hearing the musical relationship in the pentatonic feel and raw, sometimes mysterious energy, Asnaké particularly connected with the song’s anti-war lyrics, which resonate with Ethiopia’s current situation locked in a civil conflict since 2018. Sabbath’s lyrics are translated into Amharic and sung with a keening, melismatic passion. Such politically-charged statements can be dangerous in today’s Ethiopia, but some songs are too important to keep quiet.
On either side of the Black Sabbath classic are two songs associated with the kings of Ethiopian soul. ‘Yene Felagote’ (My Interest) was made famous by Tilahoun Gessesse, and Asnaké absolutely explodes out of the gates to open the album while Martin’s tenor sax bridges the conceptual gap between rock guitar and the sound of traditional Ethiopia, the masenko fiddle. Getatchew Kassa’s song ‘Lewsedesh Andken’ (One Day I Will Take You) is transformed by layers of cross-rhythms, spiky saxophone and funky organ grooves providing space for Asnaké’s charismatic strut. Both are love songs on their surface, but their lyrics are full of double entendre and semantic obfuscations, hiding multiple layers of deep meaning. This playful and poetic treatment is a powerful form of Ethiopian expression known as semena werk, wax and gold: entertaining words with profound significance at their core. Ukandanz make their music in the same way – complexities, contradictions and confluences interweave into a vibrant and effervescent eruption of unique Ethio-European noise.
Friday, 31 January 2025
Nahawa Doumbia - Vol. 2 (Sakòrò-Mery)
First published in Songlines Magazine issue 205, February/March 2025.
Nahawa Doumbia
Vol. 2 (Sakòrò-Mery)
Awesome Tapes from Africa (36 mins)
Awesome Tapes from Africa’s record label started off by reissuing the album Vol. 3 by Malian singer Nahawa Doumbia in 2011, and followed it up in 2019 with Vol. 1. Now, they complete the set by reissuing 1982’s Vol. 2.
This album was originally released just one year after Nahawa’s debut, and very much follows in the same vein. It’s a distillation of the Wassoulou sound, stripped right back to just Nahawa’s voice and the acoustic guitar of her husband, N’gou Bagayoko. This puts the focus directly on the singer, and the sweetness, subtlety and earnestness that permeates each of her lines. The guitar isn’t there to take any limelight, but N’gou does allow himself to decorate the circular accompaniment with delicious flourishes whenever appropriate. It’s a gentler sound than we have come to expect of Wassoulou music – this is music for swaying rather than energetic dancing.
The recordings’ age is obvious from their sound, the remastering process not fully capable of restoring them from an imperfect LP pressing (the masters no longer exist). In the end, though, it is the music and Nahawa’s beautifully controlled voice that matter most. Both shine through and mark Nahawa Doumbia as one of the stars of her style.
Nahawa Doumbia
Vol. 2 (Sakòrò-Mery)
Awesome Tapes from Africa (36 mins)
Awesome Tapes from Africa’s record label started off by reissuing the album Vol. 3 by Malian singer Nahawa Doumbia in 2011, and followed it up in 2019 with Vol. 1. Now, they complete the set by reissuing 1982’s Vol. 2.
This album was originally released just one year after Nahawa’s debut, and very much follows in the same vein. It’s a distillation of the Wassoulou sound, stripped right back to just Nahawa’s voice and the acoustic guitar of her husband, N’gou Bagayoko. This puts the focus directly on the singer, and the sweetness, subtlety and earnestness that permeates each of her lines. The guitar isn’t there to take any limelight, but N’gou does allow himself to decorate the circular accompaniment with delicious flourishes whenever appropriate. It’s a gentler sound than we have come to expect of Wassoulou music – this is music for swaying rather than energetic dancing.
The recordings’ age is obvious from their sound, the remastering process not fully capable of restoring them from an imperfect LP pressing (the masters no longer exist). In the end, though, it is the music and Nahawa’s beautifully controlled voice that matter most. Both shine through and mark Nahawa Doumbia as one of the stars of her style.
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