“Warm Heart of Africa” from The Very Best
The debut album from The Very Best, “Warm Heart of Africa,” due out later this fall, has hit the web: we’ve only given it a few spins, but we can already tell that this is some absolutely incredible stuff. The new LP is the follow-up to The Very Best’s fantastic self-titled mixtape, which dropped last December; comprised of DJ duo Radioclit and Malawi-born singer Esau Mwamwaya, The Very Best bring incredibly diverse, incredibly exciting, epic sounds to “Warm Heart of Africa.”
Any comparisons to Paul-Simon-circa-Graceland are more or less gone at this point; taking the album’s title from the nickname of Malawi, the native country of lead singer Mwamwaya, almost all of “Warm Heart of Africa” is in Chichewa, Mwamwaya’s native tongue. That being said (or maybe because of that??) “Warm Heart of Africa” is a completely danceable album to a so-called “Western” listener; while it’s easy to be swept away by Mwamwaya’s mesmerizing voice and forget that Radioclit is at all involved, the album is pointedly danceable, no doubt thanks to Radioclit’s production. Turn this stuff up loud and it’s almost irresistible: Mwamwaya’s beautiful, full voice over Radioclit’s sweeping and epic beats is stuff we just haven’t ever heard before. There’s a smoking hot, Paper-Planes-esque jam, Julia, a twitching almost sultry dance number; there’s the title track, a fuzzy summer jam featuring Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig; and there’s the absolutely beautiful, glistening and exhiliharating anthem Mfumu. The album features two guest spots from big names Ezra Koenig and M.I.A., but their appearance on the album is almost superfluous considering just how good The Very Best are. If we ever direct a movie, a song off this album will without a dbout appear on the soundtrack.
This album is going to be huge: with every listen, it sounds more and more like our favorite album of the year.
“Warm Heart of Africa” track list:
01 Yalira
02 Chalo
03 Warm Heart Of Africa Featuring Ezra Koenig
04 Mwazi
05 Nsokoto
06 Angonde
07 Julia
08 Mfumu
09 Ntende Uli
10 Rain Dance Featuring M.I.A.
11 Kamphopo With Intro
12 Kada Manja
13 Zam’dziko
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LINK?
y r u being a noncomformist with the firefox setup just go with ie
we know we know, but we’re really feeling our layout and making it compatible in IE would mean changing it
Thanks for this Warm Heart of Africa! Excellent!