Yene Mircha

After Awesome Tapes from Africa reissued three of his old tapes to wide acclaim, Ethiopian keys player Hailu Mergia – by then a taxi driver in Washington, DC – made his comeback in 2018 with his first new album for 15 years, Lala Belu. That album was a showcase of classy, intelligent jazz infused with the customary Ethiopian flavour. Yene Mircha does not reach the same heights as its predecessor. It has such a different vibe that it's actually quite bizarre. While still firmly in the Ethio-jazz mould, this time around it seems to have lost all of the edge that made the last one so exciting.

Opener ‘Semen Ena Debub’ is smooth, poppy and anodyne, and the rest of the album carries on in much the same vein. A lot of it feels akin to muzak or even, at times, a cheap karaoke backing track. A slight reprieve comes in the form of ‘Bayne Lay Yihedal’, a piece originally written by Asnaketch Worku changed up into a swaggering Ethio-dub, but it's not enough. To follow an album so good with one like this is astonishing and disappointing. Hopefully it's just an anomaly and Mergia will be back to his wizarding ways soon.