Salone

The Kondi Band teams the blind Sierra Leonean thumb piano player and vocalist Sorie Kondi with the US producer and DJ Chief Boima, whose own family roots lie in West Africa. Their collaboration began after Boima discovered a video on YouTube of Kondi's track ‘Without Money, No Family’ and decided to remix it. His bootlegged version was picked up by other DJs and built up a cult following, word of which eventually reached Kondi's manager in Freetown who got in touch with Boima to suggest a more formal collaboration. A Kickstarter campaign raised the funds for Kondi to travel to the US, where they recorded this album.

The results are pretty fabulous, with Boima adding dance-friendly electronic textures to Kondi's deep vocals and rhythmic thumb piano, which is frequently made to sound more like a marimba than the mbira stylings of Thomas Mapfumo. It works so well because Boima never smothers Kondi's authenticity: the production is techno, but sparse and minimalist with plenty of space. The new tracks are augmented by Boima's remix of ‘Without Money, No Family’. It's probably the least satisfying track here, as it happens, but it did its job in bringing the two of them together to make what is one of the most intriguing African albums of the year.