T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo featuring Melomé Clement
West African Beat
(Acid Jazz)
★★★★★

Sixteen rare 45s and EP tracks, the T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo, were one of the most prolific, West African bands of the 1970s. They  came together in 1965 under the leadership of singer and saxophonist Melome Clemente.

Recorded in Lagos at EMI for the Albarika Store label and other tiny labels and sold in Benin and Niger in the late ’60s into the early ’80s, the band are well drilled and play a mix of guitar lead soukus, brassy afro-beat, funk and soul with some great funky drumming reminiscent of James Brown’s great drummer Clyde Stubblefeild.

Licensed from the Clement family, the album comes complete with detailed notes (with labels and sleeves) by Francis Gooding, who describes first finding these records from a stall on London’s Camden Market! A crate diggers dream!

Tamikrest 
Assikel
(Glitterbeat)
★★★★☆

The sixth album from the desert blues band Tamikrest who hail from the war zone of Northern Mali — where a quarter of a million people fled to Mauritania to escape the violence committed by the Malian armed forces and Wagner Group mercenaries.

For two decades Tamikrest, like the popular Malian band Tinariwen, their members come from the Touareg culture of the Sahara.

Tamikrest means “union” in Tamasheq (the language of the Touareg) and they have become the peoples voice in raising the awareness of the Touareg’s plight.

Formed in 2006 the band, like Tinariwen, play complex electric guitar music with hypnotic and slide guitar interplay. Recorded live over 10 days in October 2025 on a 16-track analog tape machine in a studio in Haarlem, Holland, the album features Ibrahim Ag Alhabib from Tinariwen as a guest guitarist.

Dub Colossus  
Dub Will Keep Us Together
(Real World X)
★★★★☆

Founded in 2008 by Nick Page (aka Count Dubulah), Page was working on this album up to a few weeks before he died in 2021. Page was one of the founding fathers of the dub global music scene who played a mix of global fusion, dub reggae, afrobeat and jazz with vocals in English, Amharic, French and Spanish, this album contains songs of resistance to the global forces now shaping society.

With superb vocals by Ethiopian singer Mimi Zenebe and Holly Holden — not to mention some brilliant musicians including drummer Paul Chivers, Transglobal Underground’s Tim Whelan — Page plays an array of instruments and does the electronic wizardry/computer programming and Toby Mills plays bass.

Standout tracks include Dub Conquers All, Do We Have A Right and 24 Carat Dub Affair. This is infectious stuff.