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Sample Track 1:
"Alice in Voodooland" from West Nile Funk
Sample Track 2:
"Wadjo" from West Nile Funk
Sample Track 3:
"Ebae [Tel Aviv / Ghana]" from West Nile Funk
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West Nile Funk
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Layer 2
CD Review

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6 Moons, CD Review >>

Former bassist for David Bowie, Lou Reed and Me'Shell Ndegocello, Yossi Fine is the founder and bassist for Ex-Centric Sound System and their new album West Nile Funk, a drum'n'bass fest of African themes hammered home by Moroccan/Israeli drummer Michael Avgil, with vocals and kpanlogo drums, balafon and kalima provided by Ghanaian musician/dancers Nana Dazie and Miss Avedo Favouz.

What separates this effort from other Afrotech projects are the lack of HipHop grooves and the use of full-length rather than sampled/snippeted African vocals which range from a Hutu wedding song to autobiographical lyrics with Hebrew portions about being Ghanaians living in Israel. West Nile Funk is all about what Malaysians call bhols - interlocking circulating drum patterns with roots in trance dancing. Where this uptempo tribal content meets modernity is with its use of funk bass elements. Those take the place of the slower dub beats that Ex-Centric explored on their previous Electric Voodooland.

This isn't at all music for sedentary listening. It's melodically and harmonically far to sparse and cool for that. No, this is beat-centric music for dancing, for moving the body. It needs to be played loud and over a system capable of delivering the low-frequency content convincingly. The pulsating low-bass beats must do what they were designed to do - bypass the mind, trigger the wild child within and have it stretch and step out, then whirl and shake the head and be ridden by the riddim. Because West Nile Funk doesn't rely on the ubiquitous electric guitars and their grungy distortion elements, it has less of a Techno and more of an upbeat Ambient feel that could emerge from a sound system truck to accompany an impromptu documentary IMAX showing of African scenery in Koyaanisqatsi fashion. 07/01/04 >> go there
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