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Earlier this week in a review of the three new Joni Haastrup/MonoMono re-issues, PopMatters’ Matthew Fiander said, “Nigerian multi-instrumentalist Joni Haastrup may not be the household name Fela Kuti is, but he is as indelible a part of Afro-beat and Nigerian music as the Black President is.”
Late last month, Soundway and Tummy Touch and re-released Haastrup’s solo album, as well as two albums of his band MonoMono. Fiander describes the batch of three records as “brief—each clocks in under 40 minutes—but they show a heavier soul mix in Haastrup’s vision of Afro-funk and rock music. If James Brown was a huge influence on Afro-beat in general, then Haastrup is his closest musical student. These are tighter compositions than Kuti’s, but they still manage a similar dichotomy: they are dynamic and shifting and yet build tension and inertia on insistent repetition.”
Those three classic Afro-beat albums are all worth checking out. To celebrate their release, Soundway and Tummy Touch have provided us with an exclusive MP3 of “Adele” in the original 7-inch version to share with our readers. This tune was “cleaned up” for the vinyl re-release, but here you can enjoy the tune in its original glory with no modern varnishes applied.
