Fresh from Amsterdam, Bomb Diggy’s Crusade of the Monkey Mix!!!
In their own words: “For this mix the crew-members individually gave their most powerful tropical bass tracks to the mix monkey for a lousy fee of 2 crates of bananas, some pineapple juice, and a bottle of Dominican rum. He sent us back this mix a week later.”
Our friend Gervase de Wilde writes for the Guardian, and we’ve been secretly hoping he’d get Just A Band a feature in the paper… but as it turns out the band shows up in the travel section as a fine example of Nairobi’s lively music scene. No need to paraphrase, just click on the image!
Our German sucks, but we still love to *read* Hat + Hoodie’s posts – or should we say, look at the odd series of letters and wonder what they are saying. Thankfully, once they get behind the decks the language is universal, and this last mixtape of is sure to move any dancefloor from Cape Town to Hamburg, Dakar to Beijing. Here’s what the doods have to say:
How long have you been DJing?
Both of us have been DJing for a long time, together it’s over 20 years. We dug many different styles ever since and got to know lots of great music, which maybe is why we still like our sets rather diverse. Being friends for a long time, we finally teamed up in 2009 and started hat+hoodie.
How long have you been into tropical / African beats?
We both were into Reggae, Dancehall, Ska and Afrobeat at some point, which probably built the foundation for us. In the last few years we became more and more involved in electronic dance music, but always felt it lacked the rough and direct energy of a Dancehall party. Playing so-called “World Music” never was an option, as it was considered Hippie-Music and absolutely not club-compatible in Germany. So you had to listen to it secretly, ha ha. That was, until 2008 Radioclit and Buraka Som Sistema hit the clubs. Hearing “Secousse” for the first time was a true key moment – We instantly got hooked on Tropical Bass and World Electronics.
Its an eclectic mix… What’s the story behind it? What are some of your current favorites?
We tried to put everything in there that we like right now, so there’s Tropical House, some UK Funky, African Beats, Barefoot, Dancehall… We like it wildstyle, a whole night of Tech House gets us bored. Then we wanted to feature some of the great artists we met on the internet recently, such as BukBuka from Istanbul or Sabbo from Tel Aviv. We really love cruising the Web for new artists and connecting with them. We also wanted to represent the German/Austrian scene, so there’s the very awesome Schlachthofbronx from Munich, So Shifty from Hamburg, and of course Vienna‘s Ku Bo and Beware & Motorpitch.
We like messing around with music rather than only playing it out, so we mashed some of the tracks, re-arranged them, combined them… What came out is pretty much what we consider a good party: global dancehall music, lots of bass and a touch of anarchy, hehe.
Playlist:
Skeat – Relela [Akwaaba]
Skeat – Mama Le Papa [Akwaaba] x Douster – Alleluja [Bebup]
Killamu – Melodia de Semba [Akwaaba] x Mujava – Mugwanti/ Sgwejegweje [Out Here]
Poirier – Militaris Riddim [Ninja Tune] x So Shifty – Clap (Acapella) [Top Billin]
Fauna – Gauchito Gil (Douster Remix) [ZZK]
Skeat – Phamphanyane (hat+hoodie Edit) [Akwaaba/Bootleg]
Hat+Hoodie – o!e [Faluma Africa]
Roska – Squark (hat+hoodie Edit) [Rinse/Bootleg]
Schlachthofbronx – Vem Que Tem (Beware & Motorpitch Remix) [Man Rec.]
Sekta – Peterpan (Doc Daneeka Remix) [Top Billin]
Beware & Motorpitch – Pororoca [Man Rec.]
Manare – Pirog [Younggunz]
Old Money – Mamaseh (Sabbo Remix) [Unreleased]
Jali Bakary Konteh – Combination (hat+hoodie Remix) [Unreleased]
Chief Boima – Techno Rumba (Uproot Andy Remix) [Dutty Artz]
Legobeat – Gun, Whistle, Bird (Cocotaxi Remix) [PBP]
We Are Enfant Terrible – Wildchild (Myd Remix) [Web]
Jamtech Foundation – Run The Track [Mad Viking]
Lady Chann – Sticky Situation (Toddla T Remix Intro) [rcrdlbl]
Bert On Beats – Suomo (Ku Bo Remix) [Man Rec.]
BukBuka – Capoeiristas (Jump da f@#$ up) [Unreleased]
Schlachthofbronx – Ayoba (Ku Bo Remix) [Man Rec.]
Figura – Ze Bula (Peter Pozorek Remix Intro) [Unreleased]
Figura – Ze Bula (Sabbo Remix) [Akwaaba]
The energy today in Accra was crazy. The game stirred up the city on an otherwise quiet sunday. We’ve got more pix coming, but for now let’s celebrate the man of the hour, the Black Stars striker, Mr Asamoah Gyan! Ananse saw him and a bunch of other top soccer players at Afrodisiac a few weeks ago. This is a little more paparazzi style than we usually go for, but we hope all see this as a friendly incursion into Accra’s nightlife, and an homage to the players, cheerful and filled with energy. Go Black Stars!!!!!
Asamoah Gyan with Togo’s Emmanuel Adebayor (!)
Rahim Ayew
Derek Boateng
Adebayor breaking apart the dancefloor, with his *Francophone* DJ blasting coupé décalé!!
(apologies for the erratic layout. WordPress /Macbook not very cooperative and it’s getting late…)
Marc of Afrobeat Blog has been very supportive of our work in the past. But his latest review of Just A Band‘s album 82 is the best so far… we’re happy he dug JAB’s music, in his own words:
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: nobody is doing more to expose the best underground music in Africa to increasingly wider audiences than Akwaaba. The fair trade record label started by Benjamin Lebrave has given the world possibly their best album yet, 82 from Kenyan pop outfit Just a Band.
You may know Just a Band from their incredibly popular youtube video for Ha-He, but Just a Band has much more to offer than imitations of Chuck Norris. This album covers many bases, mixing bumping club tracks with cooler hip-hop and heartfelt down-tempo tracks. The three artists that make up Just a Band, Blinky, Dan and Jim, bring out different elements of their personality to collaboratively create a style all their own.
Just a Band accomplishes something truly impressive: they manage to create music that has widespread mainstream appeal without totally foregoing their integrity as artists. Many African musicians struggling to find their way often go for easy cop outs and cheesy effects, but Just a Band creates a production style that sounds contemporary and clean. They also know how to mesh hip-hop style lyrics in English or Swahili with R&B style vocals and electronic beats. The end result is something new and interesting you probably wouldn’t expect to come out of Africa.
This album is something new and different. If you were to listen to it blindly, you might think it came from a house producer in Miami. That’s what I like about it though, it’s maintains its African identity while simultaneously being obviously affected by European and American electronic musical styles. While it’s not easy to cross over as a Kenyan pop star, these guys have as good a shot as anybody.”