Songs of Icon

Nigerian percussionist Lekan Babalola has worked with everyone from Prince to Tony Allen, Art Blakey to Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté (plus the inevitable David Byrne and Damon Albarn) – but this 2006 album is right up there with his very best work. From rowdy Yoruba funk to luminous sacred music to cocktail jazz with a glint in its eye, it’s a non-stop cavalcade of wonderful songs and grooves. To top it off there’s an absolutely extraordinary extra disc’s worth of remixes, with the crème de la crème of broken beat and Afro-house producers of the time, mainly from the UK and France. Highlights include a riotous funk judder from IG Culture and the late Phil Asher in typically elegant form, but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts – it’s a vital joining of dots through Black Atlantic and global modern club forms.