7Suns – Ethnomusicology, Vol. 1 (2011)

This is one of the most random albums in my collection. Me and a few of my friends went to see this band live in Brighton in midsummer 2012. None of us knew the band in advance, but we just wanted to see some live music and this is what was on offer. One of my friends had just moved to Brighton and the rest of us were visiting her from London. My memory of that night is that Brighton had a particularly varied and interesting night life for such a small city. This view has gotten more evidence over the years. Anyway, this band gave away some of these albums for free at their gig and that's how I ended up with this CD. I have to say that I haven't listened to this mini album that many times since, but it sounds pretty good now. Although, I definitely think this works much better played live.



This mini album only has 6 songs of which two are kind of intermission bits, which makes this album maybe more of an EP than an album. I can hear from the recording that the band hasn't invested that much into the recording itself. It sounds more like a demo, but I guess if that was the purpose of it, it works quite well. Musically, this is something in the region of afrobeat and funk and there's a strong improvisational style in the music. I remember really liking this live even though I had consumed a bit more alcohol that night than maybe I should've, which makes my memories of the band a bit hazy.

The album begins with Intro song with some vocal poetry by Asabi. This is just a short introduction to the album featuring mainly drums. The first proper song is the title track Ethnomusicology Pt. 1, which seems to draw influences from Nigerian funk music, but they also use didgeridoo and xylophone, which give the music a strange mix of styles. The guitars are quite sharp and remotely remind me of Santana. Luanda has a bit wilder rhythms and strong emphasis on electric guitars and horn section. The melody kind of sounds like some pirate film soundtracks. Then it's time for a short Interlude that brings back Asabi's poetry on top of mystic didgeridoo sounds and blinking keys. Lalin is probably the clearest afrobeat attempt on the album. I really like the authentic sounding pianos that zoom in every once in a while. The album ends with a funky song Funktuno with some quite traditional funk elements.

The compositions of the songs are quite good, but the band could play them a bit tighter. Some of the rhythms are a bit messy, which makes this EP sound more like a demo. This is specifically the kind of music where I'm expecting to be wowed by the skill of the musicians and even though I can hear skills in the band, I'm not blown away by the dynamics of the band.

I was happy (and a bit surprised) to find this EP on Spotify. This seems to be the only album from the band there, which might mean that they didn't continue recording, at least under the same name. Anyhow, this is a nice memory of a nice weekend in Brighton.

Listen to the album on Spotify.