Maybe it’s just me but I only like Antibalas when they sound most like Fela Kuti in proper tribute. Sometimes they outdid the master with balls to the wall afrobeat– I mean the first few seconds of “El Machete” off one of their earliest albums practically brings tears to my eye. It’s still nice to see them coming into their own, if in fact that’s what the new track/album represents.

To me they were always held back by the weak vocalist– his voice was too whiny and his improvisations were pretty weak in my opinion (“Move your yansh………..move your yansh……–back and forth..”). I think they’re at their best when they’re doing their uniquely gritty and powerful instrumental afrobeat– starting with intertwined guitars, then burning horns, then say a bari solo, all with a production quality that makes it impossible to independently guess that the band only started working in the 90′s. Yeah it’s been done– mostly by Fela decades before– but they still had a unique sound and filled a painful gap in modern music.

That is of course their roots, and as they get further from that I like their sound less. Just another case of a person not liking a band’s developing and changing sound.

By the way that Mahmoud Ahmed performance is AWESOME.

This tune got me though, when the bassline finally kicked in. Thanks for that.

url.