Africa Express - Africa Express Presents… Bahidorá

Africa Express have spent the last 20 years putting together great collaborative albums, with this latest one assembled at Bahidorá Festival in Mexico. As such, the list of acts involved is frankly head-spinning, with founder Damon Albarn, Moonchild Sanelly and Suicide’s Alan Vega working alongside numerous African and Latin American artists likely less familiar among Western audiences. A sense of joy and liberation courses through these sprawling 21 tracks; ideas clash and combine, interlocking in beautiful harmony. ‘The Sky Above You’ fuses sparse reggaeton rhythms and Latin pop melodies into a gorgeous, Albarn-led ballad, while ‘Seya’ - on which the numerous collaborators include London-based collective Onipa - is a wonderful Afro house track. Remarkably, these sonic shifts never result in any tonal whiplash. In spite of its scale and relatively quick assemblage, the album’s overall architecture is smartly plotted, allowing the myriad ideas coursing through the collection to somehow collide in beautiful harmony. A vibrant, messy epic with nary a dull moment in sight, this is a stellar celebration of music’s ability to both celebrate and transcend global cultures.