Owiny Sigoma Band

A group of Brit musicians travelled to Nairobi for a collaborative session with local musicians, with thoughts of exposing the music of an Africa region rarely featured on the export market. That session caught the ear of indelible tastemaker Gilles Peterson, a full-length was soon ordered, and the result is an interesting combination of both modern and traditional influences from the two continents, spawning the newly formed Owiny Sigoma Band. The group's eponymous long-player does a good job of attacking the fusion concept less obtrusively and from fewer obvious angles than we're used to seeing, as heard in the tropical guitar licks-meet-throwback dance floor rhythm section union of "Wires," the deep, dubbed-out Afrobeat mood of "Margaret Okudo" and the overall effect the commanding native vocals have in various applications throughout the disc. Outside inflections are stripped away entirely on "Owegi Owandho" to show in detail the sonic impact of the Kenyan sounds unaffected by outside accompaniment, while loose close-out jam "Raper Nyanza" serves as a revealing example of the creative process behind, and clear success of, this creative experiment.