Producer
Adrian Sherwood
's
On-U Sound
label has been home to some of the strangest characters in modern reggae music, but few quite as inscrutable as percussionist
Bonjoh Iyabinghi Noah
, who records (infrequently) under the name
African Head Charge
.
AHC
's music isn't really reggae; it's a sort of hodge-podge of ethnomusicological found sound, dubbed-up layers of percussion, and guitars (provided here, as usual, by
mainstay
Skip "Little Axe" McDonald
) and frequently unidentifiable scraps and snippets of sound gathered up from who-knows-where, all of it threaded together on a string of reggae-inflected drumming and bottomless, thrumming basslines. Much of
's music would sound downright creepy if it weren't for
Noah
's unceasing cheerfulness. On
"The Best Way,"
he happily opines that "the best way is to love," while
McDonald
's glistening, bluesy guitar licks dance around a rhythm that sounds like it's derived from samples of a ping-pong match. The unabashedly horticultural
"Take Heed"
("â?¦ and smoke up your collyweed") features drastically altered vocal samples from the late
Prince Far I
, while the vocal samples on
"Stone Aged Man"
are genuinely creepy and at times, downright distressing, an effect not helped by the tune's slightly seasick 6/8 rhythm. As is usually the case with an
album, it's difficult to tell where
's work ends and the influence of producer
begins, but the two of them have always constituted two sides of the same musical coin anyway. Newcomers to
might want to start with
Song of Praise
or
In Search of Shashamane Land
and work their way up to the even deeper weirdness of
Voodoo of the Godsent
, but for established fans, this album is as welcome as a thunderstorm in the desert. ~ Rick Anderson