Artifacts

“Miles Davis, Fela Kuti and Mulatu Astatke walk into a bar…” No, it's not a joke but one way of describing the highly successful combination of psychedelic jazz, Afro-funk and Ethio-jazz in this Belgian band's excellent second album. Frontman, flute player and saxophonist Nathan Daems composes the all-instrumental soundtrack to a surreal voyage through the secret gardens of a place he calls the ‘Abyssinian Afterlife.’

Anyone finding the pentatonic scale-based melodies in some of Francis Falceto's Éthiopiques series too meandering and, at times, inscrutable will delight in the accessibility and immediacy of tracks such as ‘Alexandria’, which channel 1970s funk into an Oriental setting. The trippy yet intricate repetitions of ‘Realm and Era’ take things in an eerily acid-esque direction while ‘Helios Victor’, with its strange animal noises, lends a comical, almost slapstick touch. There's a trance-like quality maintained throughout, conjured up by the super-tight musicianship of fellow bandmembers including Jon Birdsong (who has toured with Beck) playing cornet and sea-shells to great effect. ‘High Upon the Mountain, High Upon the Hill’ and ‘Sound Sacrament’ plod somewhat but are compensated for by the quirky brilliance of the title-track.