U’huh

I was ploughing through a pile of cds behind the cd player in the kitchen, the spirit of Marie Kondo having entered this house while I was out at work. Most of them were either magazine freebies or mixes I’d burned myself, so inevitably some were keepers and some sent into the bin awaiting their place in landfill. I kept a Piccadilly Records 2017 sampler with an interesting looking tracklist and buried in the middle of it was this.

U’huh

U’huh is by Sinkane (who made an e.p. back in 2015, four remixes of his songs by Peaking Lights, that was one of my favourite records of that year). Sinkane is Ahmed Gallab, a Sudanese- American, who combines Sudanese pop with whatever takes his fancy- dub, kraut, jazz, electronic music. U’huh is a joyful East African song with upbeat horns and a vocal saying that despite everything ‘we’re gonna be alright’. Watching the news currently I wish I shared his optimism.

This is from the Mean Dub e.p. which I highly recommend if you haven’t got it, four of Sinkane’s songs sent through the Peaking Lights dub blender.

Galley Boys (Peaking Lights Dub Mix)

Mean

One of my favourite records of this summer has been the Peaking Lights remix of Sinkane’s Yacha, which I posted a few months back. Ten minutes long, a beautiful collision of Sudan via Brooklyn versus a Wisconsin version of Jamaica. Despite being a dub mix it’s pretty fast, fully coloured in and with a vocal that swims above the rhythm and melody. A proper earworm and a dancer too. Peaking Lights have remixed three other songs from Sinkane’s Mean Love album and they all came out on an ep yesterday. As an aside, when did records start being released on Fridays?

Hold Tight is bass led with a stacatto beat and dubby percussion. Galley Boys starts with a dog barking and then rides on for a seven minutes, buckets of echo and delay. How We Be is a bass led beast, funky and insistent. Four forward thinking songs, boundaries removed, fully worked out for the head and the feet.

Yacha

This remix of Sinkane by Peaking Lights was recommended by Alexis Petridis in the newspaper last week. It’s a sweltering piece of summery goodness, ten minutes of uptempo, busy fun with a non-stop vocal coming via Sudan and the Caribbean. Party music.