Egoli

All aboard Damon Albarn's exhilarating Africa Express again, this time bound for Johannesburg. Albarn travelled to South Africa last year with a crew of Western musicians that included Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals and Yeah Yeah Yeahs' guitarist Nick Zinner. After seven days of intensive recording with an impressively diverse cast of South African artists, he returned home to fashion the tapes into this wonderfully eclectic 18-track collection. If the methodology was similar to Albarn's 2003 album Mali Music, which effectively launched what became Africa Express, the execution this time is considerably more assured. There's too much going on other than to pick out a few highlights. Veteran Zulu guitarist Phuzekhemisi is a star and teaming the Mahotella Queens with the young British singer Georgia on the electro-pop ‘City of Lights’ is inspired. BCUC sound great backing township singer Nonku Phiri, and the electrifying Xhosa ghetto-funk maverick Moonchild Sanelly is surely (in the words of Albarn) “a global superstar waiting to happen.”

As ever, Albarn allows his collaborators centre stage but he also contributes a handful of brilliant compositions, including the sublime 1970s soul throwback ‘I Can't Move’, on which he duets with Sanelly, and the gorgeous ballad ‘See the World’. Egoli may just be the best thing Africa Express has ever done.