NEW ALBUMS
AtoZ
This month…
P22 MDOU MOCTAR
P23 THE BLACK KEYS
P25 JUDY COLLINS
P26 TONY JOE WHITE
P28 VAN MORRISON
P30 SONS OF KEMET
P31 GRUFF RHYS
P32 DOROTHEA PAAS
TONY ALLEN
There Is No End
Drum great’s posthumous Afro-rap summit
DECCAFRANCE
7/10
After returning to his jazz and Afrobeat roots with 2017’s Blue Note slow-burner The Source, Tony Allen spent the months before his sudden death in 2020 immersed in hip-hop, searching for subterranean, diasporic beat connections to take forward with young rappers. The DNA strands tying bop, Afrobeat, jungle and funk mean Allen’s steady, minimal jitter philosophically and rhythmically fits with a dozen resistant voices, 40 years after Fela, flickering beneath Sampa The Great’s taunting slur and, on rubbery highlight “Cosmosis”, Ben Okri, Damon Albarn and Skepta, Allen engaged and inherent in the present ’til the last beat.