David Pratt

Yalla Miku is an exhilarating debut that reaches beyond the norm with its vitality and passion. The Geneva-based group have produced an album that is truly ‘Musique Sans Frontières’.

With ‘I Saw A Star…’, Bennet Wilson Poole have produced an album that is as exhilaratingly brilliant and accomplished as their debut. It is as prime an example of high-class, polished, rewarding and entertaining music that you are likely to hear.

As Ireke, Julien Gervaix and Damien Tesson visit new sonic territories on Tropikadelic; you will probably not hear a better debut album this year – a joyous fusion of highlife, funk, Afro-Caribbean rhythms and electro.

No Food Without Taste If By Hunger, with its hypnotic, bouncy basslines, sixties-style trippy, psychedelic guitars, seductive and oft electrifying keyboards, compelling highlife horns and raw, primal trance-like grooves makes for an irresistibly infectious album. Intoxicating funk music at its very best.

Alice’s ‘L’Oiseau Magnifique’ is a beguiling album of musical collages, replete with eccentric wit and crystalline vocals and harmonies; if you expect the unexpected, you will not be disappointed.

‘Dindin’ is an optimistic album, one on which Kimi Djabaté pays homage to his griot heritage while also artistically expressing the complexity of contemporary life in Africa, both the joys and obstacles.

Wayo is a raw, explosive and uplifting album and a totally immersive listen. The epithet “Vodou Priestess of Blues-Rock” sits well on Moonlight Benjamin; with this release, you will be rewarded in mind, body and spirit.

For those open to hearing Kologo sounds being taken down experimental routes, King Ayisoba’s frenetic Work Hard, as with his most recent releases, is worth the deep dive. 

David Pratt selects his Top 10 Albums of 2022 including The Movers, The Hanging Stars, Rachel Newton & Lauren MacColl, Angeline Morrison, Ranagri, Robb Johnson, Madalitso Band, Àfrica Negra and Perú Selvático and The Watersons.

Robb Johnson & The Xmas Irregulars delivered a delightful extravaganza and a uniquely dark and different way to celebrate the winter season with Murder At The Grange – A Christmas Murder Mystery.

For their latest release, Perú Selvático – Sonic Expedition into the Peruvian Amazon 1972-1986, the Analog Africa label once again confounds any preconceived ideas as they head to the Peruvian Amazon rainforest for some of the most exciting electric music of the 1970s and 80s.

Dark Horse is a beautiful debut EP from Annie Baylis and a thoroughly enticing introduction. I’m sure that I will not be the only one relishing the prospect of a full album.