AFRICA HITECH - 93 Million Miles

Africa HiTech's debut album is missing killer tracks like "Blen" and "How Does It Make U Feel". The former, released by Warp at the start of last year, triggered a regenerative earthquake in the world of electronic dance music. The second tremor packed the same intensity, unleashed by the equally explosive "How Does It Make U Feel": eight and a half minutes in which the Australians Mark Pritchard (Global Communication, Harmonic 313) and Steve White (aka Steve Spacek) tried to imagine the future of tech-house by blending space disco progressions with dubstep abstraction.

For their hugely anticipated debut album, Pritchard and White have put together a dozen claustrophobic dance tracks that try to live up to their name: African polyrhythms journey into the future over the off-beat rhythms of dub and dubstep, while all around them the landscapes are coloured by austere synthetic textures.

Every track is a potential hit. Although, coming from the labyrinths of underground dance music, it's unlikely that the single "Out In The Street" - which traps Ini Kamoze in an enchanting groove - will make a dent in the sales charts. Still, the whole album flows beautifully, between fat synth bass and progressions that fill out the tweeters. The real masterstrokes come in the second half of the album: "Light The Way" samples Sun Ra in a jazzy ballad brimming with soul; "Cyclic Sun" is a masterpiece of electronic spiritual jazz.

‭Flying Lotus‬ would do well to start from here again for his next album.

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20/07/2011