Obaa Sima

Brian Shimkovitz's label Awesome Tapes from Africa functions as a time capsule in so many brilliant ways. He picks up on African dance music that didn’t reach audiences in the West in the pre-internet age, not least because we were so busy listening out for what we thought music from the African continent ought to sound like – organic and rootsy – that we totally ignored much of the electronic dance floor-orientated stuff.

This gem derives from a cassette that Shimkovitz picked up at a roadside stall in Ghana about 15 years ago; in fact it was ten years old even then. Ghanaian musician Ata Kak created the music in the early 90s while he was in Toronto, using a reel-to-reel tape recorder, a computer using Atari Notator software, a synth with a built-in drum machine and the fine sensuous sheen of Lucy Quansah's chic background vocals. It is electro funk with a Ghanaian punk sensibility, on intimate terms with hip-hop and displaying a deep understanding of dance floor dynamics. The minimalist repetition is what gives it both its killer catchiness and its trancey vibe. Ata Kak is a man who had clearly been listening to everything from electric-guitar highlife and Grandmaster Flash, from the Rock Steady Crew to Kraftwerk. Maybe we couldn’t hear it at the time, but take a slug of it now – it's definitely not too late.