Tags: Gwo Ka

Review: Veteran producer, selector and all round champion of impeccable grooves Alex Attias is back on BBE with a second volume of his "Lillygood Party" collection. These are some seriously tasteful jams skirting house but with an emphasis on soul. Peven Everett sounds resplendent on Stacy Kidd's "How Bad I Want Ya" while The Elements Of Life's "Children Of The World" is a soaring slice of jazz funk strapped to a smooth house beat. There's even Pharoah Sanders jamming his sax over a peppy rhythm section and spiritually charged house meanderings from Universal Tongues featuring Elle. It's a collection that surprises and satisfies at every turn.

Review: A while back, Africaine 808's DJ Nomad contacted Favorite Recordings' chief Pascal Rioux about a killer track he'd been given some years back - an obscure, previously CD-R only fusion of modern Gwo-ka and Zouk by Esnard Boisdur entitled "Mizik Bel". Rioux was excited by what he heard and agreed that the track should come out on vinyl, accompanied by a fresh rework by Nomad and Dirk Leyers as Africaine 808. Boisdur's original version (side A) is rhythmically dense but also cheery and life affirming, with celebratory chorus vocals and 80s zouk style synth lines subtly rising above a busy, all-action groove. Arguably even better is the sub-heavy Africaine 808 mix, which brilliantly re-imagines the track as a tasty chunk of tropical house/disco-zouk fusion.

Review: Excursions in Gwoka vol. 2 is another adventurous outing for the Beauty & the Beat label that takes them ever deeper into the gwoka scene of Guadeloupe. it is the celebrated carnival outfit Akiyo who are in focus here with two tracks taken from second and supremely hard-to-find long player, Mouvman, in 1993. 'Deboule' is a real heater with bustling drum funk and chatting tribal vocals all run through with synth wizardry from Marie-Galante Jacques-Marie Basses. 'Blo' is just as steamy and intern with percussion, whistles and big beats all making quite the impact. Breakplus adds a London twist to 'Deboule' while CW adds a cosmic air to 'Blo.'

Review: The fantastic Tumblack was an overlooked group project made up of prolific French-Beninois everything-composer Wally Badarou and Tele Music library star Sauveur Mallia. Described as a "truly special disco-not-disco LP" by Be With, Tumblack saw to recreating the overtop pressures of hi-NRG disco without indulging the genre's otherwise glitzy sonic excesses. Instead, the likes of 'Invocation' and 'Parlement' remain rooted in deep percussed drum sounds, taking many cues from the zouk-informed musical traditions of the neighbouring Caribbean isles of Martinique and Guadeloupe. Only perhaps 'Caraiba' picks up a true boogie steam, with clavinet and bass enshrouding the crescendo in a true state of ecstasy. With original copies by and large nonexistent by now, this is a due (or possibly even overdue) repress indeed.

Review: A rare new V/A record from the diggers deific over at Time Capsule - Kay Suzuki and company - whose focus on reissues has thus far formed a dense but not unbraveable thicket of drummy disco, city pop, reggae and international rerubs. Formed out of the East London party scene centring on Brilliant Corners and Beauty & The Beat, this four-track haul of Choice Remixes is a surely credible little curation. Suzuki lends four flips to the record - first of Gaoule Mizik's 'A Ka Titine' from 2022, which reappears with expository force, providing a banging re-bake of the Guadeloupean gwoka original. The theme continues on a version of Broki's 'Es Que Lo Es', which veers Latin minimalia, before slowing to a chuggy pace on 'Sortez Les Filles', before a final, synthy piano duet leaves the proceedings on a piquant hurrah, 'Oyelo'.

Review: Strut introduces the highly anticipated third volume in the Disques Debs International series, diving deeper into the archives of one of the greatest French Caribbean labels, Disques Debs, based in Guadeloupe. Founded by Henri Debs in the late 1950s, the Debs studio naturally doubled as a record label and ran for over 50 years, releasing more than 300 7" singles and 200 LPs, cementing it as one of the foremost record labels to prize Caribbean music history. Not just limited to Guadeloupean musicians but also Martinicians and Parisians, the likes of Jocelyn Mocka, Mariz, Dominique Parol, Christian Yeye and Alex Rosa make this a thixotropic record, mercurial and restless as it is rooted in forms of zouk, biguine, gwoka and, of course, the nascent electronica. This third volume flaunts the label's dynamic latter-day period, as it interpreted the analog electronic dreams of the 1980s.

Review: Strut continues to explore the vast archives of Disque Debs, a long-running, Guadalupe-based label that, over the course of half a century, released a wealth of music from the Caribbean. In the process, Henri Debs imprint helped launch the careers of countless French-speaking artists while not only showcasing stylistic movements such as zouk, bouyon and merengue, but also bold, colourful and tropical takes on existing Caribbean, Amercian and European sounds. Highlights include - but are in no way limited to - the slowly unfurling, synth-heavy shuffle of Sadi Lancreot's club-ready 'Dou Se Vou Ki Siwo' and the horn-heavy tropical disco brilliance of Dominuque Parol's 'Come On Baby'.

Review: Symbole has secured the rights to the first-ever release of Patrick Jean-Marie's seminal Atika - LIVE! This rare recording - which has been made from the original master tape - was captured in mono during a 1982 TV live show on RFO in Guadeloupe. The fragile tape's survival is a real miracle. Recorded in non-studio conditions, the spontaneous and improvised sequences create an atmosphere that shows up the subtle dialogues between the musicians. The Jean-Marie brothers shine at their best here as they effortlessly cross musical dimensions. Raw but intimate, this is a special piece of musical history.