African Suite

African Suite
A1 - Grass
A2 - Pygmy
B1- African Suite

(320 kbps, ripped from the vinyl. Needle drops included because it's fun that way, it's like we're hanging out and I'm playing you records.)

Hello please. This post is for you, and only for you. I am speaking to you alone, and directly. The way that the door before the law, in Kafka's parable, exists solely for the man from the countryside who now stands before it - "nur fuer dich bestimmt." Others will read this post, but they will miss the encoded message that exists only for you to interpret, you who by such good fortune have come now to read this message, now at this occulted turning point in your own life, beholden as it is to the vissicitudes of history, but never without its moments of ecstatic insight, like when the internet addresses you personally, changing you irrevocably.

African Suite is a 1980 release on MCA records, helmed by Ritchie Rome, a member of the highly cheesy disco outfit the Ritchie Family. It should be said here that there is little ground for ever justifying string sections in disco. Despite a widespread cultural propensity for such a style, adding an orchestra to a churning disco beat is like inserting an ice cream sandwich into a cheeseburger.

In contrast, African Suite is a studio one-off that sounds like ESG minus the South Bronx plus studio overdubs: stripped-down heavy afro-disco but instead of street black jump-rope rhymes there's white-girl cooing and weird effects. It's really good. The entire second half of the record is an epic percussive workout, "Vibes" being the highlight. If you enjoy such things as ESG and Liquid Liquid, there is a strong indication that this record, presented here as three separate files, will be highly pleasing to you.

The faithful reader will be rewarded this week, as a rather life-changing interlude in the mountains has caused enough interruptions in blog service to warrant a comparative deluge in ill shit that needs to be posted hard. Vinyl-only or sort of vinyl-only rarities abound, as does awesome new shit you don't know about yet.