Afefe Iku “Compass Rose”
You never know what to expect from Osunlade: he can veer from the very smoothest winebar house to mind-bending Afro-funk without warning. But even so, while first spinning the new compilation on his Yoruba label, we were knocked for six by this piece by his protege Afefe Iku and the mysterious Piscean Group. We can only describe it as a kind of jittery Afro-Balearic groove, full of hints of Tony Allen, of mystical Italian and German synth explorers, of New York loft parties at the end of the 1970s where you might see Arthur Russell grooving in a corner… not that we’d know, of course – but it’s the kind of track that gets your imagination working overtime. Preorder the compilation here.