All items must be returned as new in their original packaging, including all accessories and cables. Missing items will be charged based on suggested retail prices. It shreds unlike anything else you’ve heard this week, or this month, or this year, and that in itself is reason to seek it out.We offer a 30-day money back guarantee on all products purchased from. Anyone interested in the history of rock and roll, or of African music-or hell, anyone who just wants to hear some solid guitar rock-should give this album a listen. True, there’s something a little flat to the production, and the drums in particular lack a bit of heft-surprising, considering that Tembo was a drummer.
Despite the album’s relatively brief running time, most of it is so densely packed with riffage and distortion that it often punches above its sonic weight. They succeed in that well enough, but come on and rock, guys!Īnd rock they do. The playing is never less than spot-on, and even on “Lonely Night” Ngozi rips out a killer solo, but the songs are trying to be nothing more than good time toe-tappers. A couple songs plough a poppier and less effective furrow as such, “Lonely Night” and “I’ve Been Losing” are competent but less than compelling. It’s easy to imagine the musicians trading glances as if to say, “One more time around, I’m not done with this solo yet.” At its best, the album wallows in such deep fuzz and murky acoustics, thus turning the limitations of the recording into strengths.Īny number of tracks here are equally strong, like “Coffin Maker” with its noodling guitar lines, or “Fisherman” with its scattershot fuzz, or the irresistible riff of mid-tempo rocker “Oh Yeh Yeh.” Tembo, Mwale and Ngozi are a well-oiled unit throughout, tight enough to play off of one another but loose enough that they never lose their almost improvisational vibe. Mwale’s bass sounds tuned down, and the lo-fi production serves only to enhance the song’s sinister undertones. “Trouble Maker” is the best song here, a brooding, muddy-sounding song that sounds like a cross between Jimi Hendrix and Black Sabbath-hardly the perception of Afro-pop that most of us carry around nowadays. Good-natured or not, though, the real star here is Ngozi and his fiery fretwork. Tommy Mwale’s propulsive basslines serve to keep things moving along as well, especially on opener “My Ancestors” and the hypnotic “Oh Yeh Yeh.” This is good-natured rock and roll whose energy and bounce is very difficult to resist. Tembo possesses a smooth, lilting voice, and singing in English, his simple lyrics are easily grasped. With nine songs clocking in between three and four minutes, there is a certain uniformity of approach here, but the approach goes down so sweetly so it’s hard to argue. No matter though: this is a terrific record, and adventurous lovers of fuzz guitar owe it to themselves to check it out. Tembo served as Ngozi’s drummer but this time, the billing is reversed, with Tembo’s name on the album and Ngozi noodling away in the background.
Now comes My Ancestors by Chrissy Zebby Tembo. Last year’s 4-disc retrospective of the band Witch served as a landmark-one that is sadly already unavailable on -and records like Paul Ngozi’s The Ghetto were able to reach a wide and appreciateive audience. Zamrock, as it is known, was rarely heard outside of the African continent until recently, when the Shadoks label teamed up with QDK media to reissue and distribute albums that had long gone out of print. Rock music from the southwest African country of Zambia first rose to prominence in the 1970s.
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