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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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CD Review

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Ex-Centric Sound System
West Nile Funk

I.R.S. Records, 2004

from the Afropop Music Shop

 Yossi Fine, bass player, producer and ringleader of the lucid Ex-Centric Sound System, has bridged an amazing breadth of African-based sounds - traditional Ghana and West African drumming, Afro-Caribbean dance rhythms, Jamaican dancehall vocals and American hip-hop beats and production - to create a thorough, detailed exploration of groove music. In the mere 45 minutes that West Nile Funk encompasses, it may well take dozens of listens to unravel the thick layers to find all of what lies beneath. The good news is you'll want to spin the disc that often, as you'll be dancing to each global rotation.

Composed of a seriously talented quartet - the aforementioned Fine, vocalist/flautist/drummer/balafone player Nana Dadzie, Miss Adevo (playing the same combination of instruments) and kit drummer Michael Avgil - Ex-Centric circumnavigates the planet with the heritages of each player, let alone musicality. Israel, Ghana, Morocco and West India all figure in, but their uniqueness lies in the integrity of floor-stomping dance rhythms worked inside bouncing lines of balafone and kpanlogo drums.

Fine, whose teeth have been cut and sharpened with incredible musicians (David Bowie, Emil Zrihan, Naughty by Nature, Ruben Blades, John Scofield, Lou Reed), produced West Nile Funk like an electronic club-destined record, even though each part was played live. Inspired by Carnaval's huge trucks and their sheer low-end domination, he mimics hip-hop and dancehall technique by tweaking the bass and drum beats while splicing tastefully the interlocking polyrhythmic flutes and kalimbas. Pulling some vocals from lyrical talents he discovered while scouring Jamaica, he throws natty dreadness into calabashes atop frighteningly sacred 4/4 rhythms. In this, Fine's ritual resolves.

Ex-Centric knows how to let a beat ride itself patiently ("Djibo") or get straight to the point ("The Original Ragga"). The album is hard-hitting ("Ebae") but not afraid to chill out ("West Nile Funk"). The 10 tracks cover ground vast as the instrumentation and influences it was born of, finding coherency and continuity with it's innate ability to dig up raw roots music and splatter them against new landscapes. The ritual is not blasphemed, but given new birthright: modernization of African music, Ex-centric style.

Contributed by: Derek Beres for www.afropop.org

 11/23/04 >> go there
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