Unlearning/Open Letter to Adoniah

The credits on this double album by the young dreadlocked South African jazz guitarist and singer contain the intriguing line: ‘Music received by Sibusile Xaba.’ It's a reference to his belief that the music came to him in a series of dreams and it lends a free-floating, hallucinatory quality to the compositions, inspired by the veteran South African guitarist Philip Tabane, whose malombo style – combining elements of jazz, Brazilian tropicália, flamenco and tribal southern African folk styles – was forged more than 40 years ago. The first disc, Unlearning, has a fragmentary, unworldly atmosphere as freewheeling jazz phrases are repeated by Xaba on a nylon-stringed acoustic guitar while his voice scats mysteriously over Bonolo Nkoane's brushed drums and Ariel Zamonsky's slinky upright bass. The second disc, Open Letter to Adoniah, is more experimental and features Tabane's son, Thabang, on hand-held percussion and falsetto vocal harmonies. I don't know what he's singing or scatting about, but there's a ritualistic quality – as if he's exorcising spirits and is in communion with a world far removed from our earth-bound existence. At times he sounds like an inspired genius, at others like a primitive innocent. Sometimes he manages to sound like both at the same time. An extraordinary album.