Funkateers Tony Allen
+ Damon Albarn
+ Flea
= Rocket Juice & The Moon
Rocket Juice & The Moon (Photo credit - Tom Sheehan)
Master drummer Tony Allen (Nigeria; the dude to thank for the beat in Afrobeat) and Damon Albarn (the man with too many musical faces to count) have been occasional travelling partners for a few years now, first getting together in the supergroup The Good, The Bad & The Queen, which resulted in the 2007's self-titled album.Despite Tony's trademark grooves and unmistakably African polyrhythmic style, that album, a dub-folk, reggae-tinged rock affair, was rooted more in London than anywhere else. This time around, Rocket Juice & The Moon, the new album from another supergroup of the same name (this one featuring Damon, Tony and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea), the centre of gravity shifts closer to Africa, specifically West Africa.
Rocket Juice & The Moon performing "Follow-Fashion" (f/ Fatoumata Diawara and M.anifest) at La Fiesta des Suds, Marseille, France, October 2011What we have here is a mélange of West African-style funk, Afrobeat, cosmic jazz and psychedelia, an open-ended 18-track jam session that grooves with the liquid pulse of Fela's classic recordings and includes guest appearances by M.anifest and M3nsa (Ghana), Fatoumata Diawara and Cheick Tidiane Seck (Mali) and Erykah Badu.
The drums and the bass guitar are rhythm instruments, so not surprisingly Flea's fat funky baselines and Tony's drumming set the template and anchor the album in Afrobeat/funk-land, so much so that Poison, the first track to feature Damon's vocals, comes as a bit of a surprise. That track is something of an interruption, to be honest, but a brief one, fortunately, so you're soon back in the groove with Extinguised, which features some crazy Sun Ra-style space-jazz-moog injections of sound from Damon.
"Extinguished", feat Cheick Tidiane Seck, at Fiesta des SudsThis album is nasty, one you're gonna want to listen to on a sound system with a room-sized sub-woofer. In one word, awesome!
Rocket Juice & The Moon is out on the 26th of March, but you can pre-order it now from Honest Jon's or iTunes.
(Listen to samples from all 18 tracks at Honest Jon's)
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>via: http://vimeo.com/19590722