Sound Travels on Wednesday is all about new music and we started the midday today with an item that I had to bend the rule a bit on. Though the material on Analog Africa's latest stellar compilation of lost African arts is completely vintage, it's material that arely saw the light of day in the first place. A look into a lost world is revelatory enough for me, especially when the first volume in this series, Angola Soundtrack, was so superb and my Compilation of the Year for 2011. Well Angola Soundtrack 2 is out now and is in every way equal to the first, the vinyl is on my Christmas music wish list, and since it came so late it'll sit like a king atop my shortlist for best-of's for 2014.
What Analog Africa's Angola Soundtrack series is all about, is sharing music from the brief history of the Angolan recording industry. An industry that apparently didn't last long having sprung in the midst of liberation from Portuguese colonial powers in the mid 60's and bloomed but briefly ending amid a brutal civil war that consumed the country from the mid 70's on. Angola Soundtrack offers a rare window into a scene that barely was but burned hot on these awesome and obscure dance tracks. So thouroughly dope I'll just SWITCH TO CAPS AND SAY "BUY THIS!"