Germany

The Pop Makossa adventure started in 2009, when Analog Africa founder Samy Ben Redjeb first travelled to Cameroon to make an initial assessment of the country’s musical situation. He returned with enough tracks for an explosive compilation highlighting the period when funk and disco sounds began to infiltrate the Makossa style popular throughout Cameroon.So why has it taken almost eight years from that first visit to the final compilation? From the very beginning, there were several mysteries hanging over Pop Makossa.What had happened to Bill Loko, the teenage super-star whose monster hit ‘Nen Lambo’ caused such a sensation that he was forced to flee to the other side of the world? How did bandleader Eko Roosevelt go from Cameroonian prodigy to chief of an idyllic seaside village? And who exactly was Mystic Djim, the dreadlocked producer and mercurial hit-maker whose wizardry on a simple home four-track recorder could outshine even the mighty studios of Cameroon’s National Radio station?It was not until DJ and music producer Déni Shain was dispatched to Cameroon to finalise the project, license the songs, scan photographs, and interview the artists that some of the biggest question marks began to disappear. His journey from the port city of Douala to the capital of Yaoundé brought him in contact with the lives and stories of many of the musicians who had shaped the sound of Cameroon’s dance music in its most fertile decade.Indeed, all the tracks on Pop Makossa are a revelation. The beat that holds everything together has its origins in the rhythms of the Sawa people, Ambassey, Bolobo, Assiko and Essewé, a traditional funeral dance. But it wasn’t until these rhythms arrived in the cities of Cameroon and collided with Merengue, High-Life, Congolese Rumba, and, later, Funk and Disco, that modern Makossa was born.Makossa, the beat that long before football, managed to unify the whole of Cameroon, was successful in part because it was so adaptable. Some of the greatest Makossa hits incorporated the electrifying guitars and tight grooves of funk, while others were laced with cosmic flourishes made possible by the advent of the synthesizer. However much came down to the bass, and from the rubbery hustle underpinning Mystic Djim’s ‘Yaoundé Girls’ to the luminous liquid disco lines which propel Pasteur Lappé’s ‘Sekele Movement’, Pop Makossa demonstrates why Cameroonian bass players are some of the most revered in the world.Yet at the end of it all, there was still one final mystery facing the production team at Analog Africa: how was this compilation of amazing sounds from Cameroon going to begin?After many month and hundreds of different running orders, something still didn’t seem to click … until one day they came across a mighty song entitled ‘Pop Makossa Invasion,’ recorded for Radio Buea, a tune so obscure that even in Cameroon it had never been released. Suddenly the whole compilation fell into place. ‘Pop Makossa Invasion’ makes its debut here and joins the pantheon of extraordinary songs that plugged Cameroon’s Makossa style into the modern world.

Totally unique and basically undiscovered Ethophian synth groove single by blind keyboardist Haile Mariam G. Ghiorgis. 500 copy press - fully licenced release which comes with a thick high quality picture sleeve.As a first release on this newly founded label, here's two totally unique and undiscovered Ethophian synth groove recordings by blind keyboardist Haile Mariam G. Ghiorgis. Both tracks are taken from the highly collectable and extremely rare debut solo album 'Tigill Lemenor (Survival)'. An album that Ghiorgis released privately in 1985 on his own Pentaton label.Born in Ethiopia in 1952, Haile M. Ghiorgis originally worked as a music instructor after school and played music together with several prominent groups of his countrymen, he was the keyboardist of Mahmoud Ahmed & Ibex Band and played for national stars like Tilahun Gessesse, among others. Due to the communist revolution in Ethiopia in 1974, Haile decided to leave his motherland and he was allowed to leave the country due to his blindness in 1977. Finding a new home in Hamburg, he performed together with various bands, including the afro pop group Soulful Dynamics and Jah Love (an early band of funk drummer and reggae artists Curvin Merchant aka Jamaica Papa Curvin). When those groups disbanded, Ghiorgis was retrained as a piano-tuner but also focussed on his own music.Haile M. Ghiorgis was particularly fascinated by the digital-controlled synthesizer and rhythm-machines, whose operation he mastered without any difficulties in spite of his blindness. The drums came from a Yamaha drum computer and were recorded first. On top of that, bass and the melodies were added. Haile was using a Yamaha DX-7 keyboard, an old small Roland synth as well as an organ by Solton.On the album, which was recorded in his small home studio in Hamburg on a TEAC 8-track tape machine, Haile M. Ghiorgis harmoniously blends western pop and jazz music with his native country's folklore. On the A side, 'Man biye?' is a sort of melancholic love song, it means 'What shall I call you?'. A man searches for something though in vain to compare with the beauty of his beloved. The atmospheric instrumental features brilliant synth solos over deep downtempo beats, sort of like jazzy ethno synth funk in slow motion.Side B of the single is the uplifting disco track 'A Happy Disco Song'. As it says in the liner notes of the LP, the song esteems Ethiopian hospitality and relates how welcome every stranger is and how even the poorest is ready to share with him. The track got a charming 'private' vibe and surely should appeal to DJs and disco/boogie aficiandos.The original LP 'Survival' was primarily sold on live shows when he was on tour in the late 1980s throughout Europe, accompaning fellow Ethopian musicians including jazz legend Mulatu Astatke, among others, and almost never pops up.