Receive Weekly Email and Text Message Updates:
Sign up for latest info on concerts, dining, promotions and more!
Go!

Most Popular

  • Dive Bars
    A handcrafted tour of the best, most obscure places to lean on a stool in Houston.
  • Getting Off
    Attorney Tyler Flood says he wins 80 percent of his clients' DWI trials, even if they were 100 percent drunk as a skunk.
  • Houston's Choice for Mayor
    Black Guy, Rich White Guy, Lesbian or Hispanic Republican
  • Burgers and Hash
    Lola, a modern diner in the Heights is dishing up some top-notch Texas short-order cooking.
  • Looking for a Bull Market
    Killen's Steakhouse in suburban Pearland is probably best during boom times.
Most Popular sponsored by

Reader's Picks

Top Recommendations

A short list of Houston's most popular hot spots.
user content provided by: LikeMe.net & Houston Press

National Features >

  • Village Voice

    The Great Walls of Chinatown

    With the exception of the electric rice cookers, this Bowery tenement could have come straight from the Nineteenth Century.

    By Elizabeth Dwoskin

  • Miami New Times

    Park or Die Tryin'

    From the homeless parking mafia to the meter fairy, finding a spot in Miami has taken a turn toward the surreal.

    By Gus Garcia-Roberts

  • City Pages

    The Baddest Men on the Planet

    Straight from the Sam's Club tire shop, Brett Rogers prepares to meet Fedor Emelianenko in mortal combat.

    By Bradley Campbell

Various Artists

Love's a Real Thing

Share

  • rss

By Dan Strachota

Published on May 26, 2005

Luaka Bop's third volume in this series -- following discs devoted to Brazil's Os Mutantes and California's Shuggie Otis -- is subtitled "The Funky Fuzzy Sounds of West Africa." That's a far better descriptor than "world psychedelia," because, while fans of the Grateful Dead and the Quicksilver Messenger Service may dig the jazzy, percussive workouts included here, they're bound to miss the transgressive freakiness of traditional psych. (The recent Love, Peace & Poetry: African Psychedelic Musicfills in the gaps a bit.) Appreciators of James Brown and Fela Kuti, however, will go apeshit over these tracks. From the propulsive, sax-fueled strut of Tunji Oyelana & the Benders' "Ifa" to the crazed vocal exulting of Moussa Doumbia's "Keleya" to the cascading guitar of Sorry Bamba's "Porry," the tracks seamlessly blend traditional African music with Western sounds of the '70s. This collection may be more bong hit than blotter acid, but when was the last time you danced while tripping, anyway?