AHYEWA by V/A

Soundway present 3 new African edits covering a variety of styles. Tip!Kicking off on the A side we have a chunky, bass-heavy slice of dancefloor highlife from 1975, boiled down from over thirty minutes to a far more dancefloor-friendly five by Frankie Francis (Sofrito) and label founder Miles Cleret (aka Hide and Smile). This dates from just before Mr. Frimpong became a household name in Ghana with his huge hit Kyenkyen Bi Adi M'Awu. The flip starts off with a thunderous un-released, un-finished, un-named forgotten track from Ghana's dance band kings of the 60s and 70s: The Uhuru Dance Band. This tape simply had the word 'Uhuru' scrawled on it and was found amongst hundreds of others in a state of dis-repair at the old Ghana record plant in Accra. Despite playing it to band leader George Amissah no title was forthcoming as the intended vocal had never been mixed in. Here Quantic has dusted it down and edited it into a surefire big-band dance-floor winner. Finally we cross the continent to Uganda with Quantic again applying the edit treatment to a 1974 mid-tempo offering from one of the top bands of the day - The Cranes.