African Head Charge
African Head Charge return to On-U Sound with their first new album in twelve years. Titled A Trip To Bolgatanga, the recordings are led by founder member Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah, with close friend and co-conspirator Adrian Sherwood once again at the controls. A Trip to Bolgatanga is a stunning return, bringing together the talents of two masters who, after a hiatus, have created a rich album brimming with ideas and executed with finesse. A Trip to Bolgatanga is being released by On-U Sound July 7.
Commenting on the gap between records, Bonjo says: “In the twelve years that have passed, I have been spending time with my family in Ghana, but I was still creating things. I still have a lot of things to let off, you know what I mean? At this time in my life I want to work, but I want to enjoy time with my family as well. When I’m enjoying myself, I’m also creating, because when you’re happy it helps you to be more creative, and the greatest happiness is to be with your family.”
Although there are sounds on this album which recall previous African Head Charge classics such as My Life In A Hole In The Ground and Songs Of Praise, it would be wrong to assume that their music is not still evolving. The master percussionist adds: “All the drumming and the chanting, it took a while to do. I’m always meeting drummers, all over Ghana. The Fante, the Akim, the Ga, the Bolgatanga, all the tribes, and they all have their different drums. I try to learn as much as I can, and put it all together. It’s like cooking, when you’re blending all of the elements, like yam, banana, pumpkin, and the end taste, that’s where it matters. That’s how I look at music. Throw a lot of things together, and then you taste it and say, “Yeah man, that tastes good. Yeah man, that sounds good.” That’s what African Head Charge is all about, those different combinations, and then bringing it to Adrian, who helps to make it another thing again.”
Producer Adrian Sherwood concurs: “It’s always a case of getting all the right ingredients sorted for Head Charge, and then having some fun with overdubs and mixing and getting it completely perfect. We always work well together, but I think on this one we have the greatest result.”
The group have been active for over four decades, and this album sees other members of the musical entity’s extended family come back to the fray. Multi-instrumentalist Skip McDonald and fellow Tackhead co-conspirator Doug Wimbish contribute to a variety of tracks. Drummer Perry Melius, whose involvement in the project dates back to the early `90s, adds a righteous rhythmic heft to a trio of tunes. In addition there are a number of notable fresh recruits. The horns and reeds of Paul Booth, Richard Roswell, and David Fullwood; Ras Manlenzi and Samuel Bergliter on keys; Vince Black on guitar. There’s additional percussion from Shadu Rock Adu, Mensa Aka, Akanuoe Angela, and Emmanuel Okine, strings from Ivan “Celloman” Hussey, plus the voice of the mighty Ghetto Priest. Very special guest, and one of Ghana’s foremost kologo players, King Ayisoba also provides vocals, and demonstrates his dexterity on the traditional two-stringed lute.
Where previous albums have been a melting pot of global influences, on their new LP African Head Charge have but one place in mind. A Trip To Bolgatanga is a musical journey to Bonjo’s current hometown in north Ghana. A psychedelic travelogue across the landscape featuring their trademark hand percussion and group chanting augmented with rumbling bass, mutated horns, dubbed out effects, wild wah-wah, haunted voodoo dancehall, synthetic swells, disco congas, tumbling layers of electronic effects, blues-inflected woodwind, and funky organ. As with every On-U Sound production, each repeated listen reveals fresh detail, and its power won’t be really understood until heard on a big system, when it’ll reduce all competition to rubble.
Tour Dates
A Trip to Japan – September 2023 (dates TBC)
Biography
African Head Charge is a project that was there right at the start of the On-U Sound label. It began as an experiment “In A Hole In The Ground”, in basement studios on London’s Berry Street, beneath Chinatown. Something that took shape during late, all night sessions, which took advantage of cheap down, or “dead”, studio time. The hours that no-one else wanted. Working, initially, with “rejected” rhythms, cast-offs from other ON-U concerns, two friends were at the core of the creativity – Adrian Sherwood and Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah.
Adrian was a mover and shaker, a budding music maker, who’d been into reggae since he was a kid. Someone who went from DJing in the school science lab at lunchtime, to spinning with Joe Farquharson at High Wycombe’s Newlands Club. Spending his Saturdays scouring the capital for import 45s, from Record Corner, in Bedford Hill, to Caesar’s in Shepherd’s Bush Market, Adrian would end up at Pama in Harlesden, where he eventually began working, aged only 15. There he helped with distribution from the associated Soundville Records shop. Eventually running the store, then starting his own company, with Joe, J&A, and label Carib Gems, which became Hitrun, and finally On-U Sound. In the process licensing early releases from Dillinger, Prince Far I, Michael Rose, Trinity, and The Twinkle Brothers. Moving into production in 1977, “just for fun”. Recording Creation Rebel’s Dub From Creation in two days, with a group of friends. None of them out of their teens. Gigs with the Prince Far I fronted Creation Rebel then brought Adrian into contact with the emerging punk scene. The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Slits, and Generation X, would all be in the audience. This led to him sharing a squat with Ari Up, and recruiting an ever more eclectic ensemble of singers and players. By his own admission, Adrian wound up spending so much time in studios that he was practically sleeping in them. All the time shaping, sculpting, his own sound, and the label’s unique identity. A cultural dubwise collision. Prompting respected DJ David Rodigan to ask, “What on Earth are you doing to reggae?”
Bonjo grew up in a Rasta camp in the hills of Clarendon, Jamaica, where his grand-aunt was a Rasta queen. Their motto was “The repairer of the beach” and they survived by making and selling lemon bread, which they called “Peacemaker Bread”. Taken under the wing of high priest, Reverend Claudius Henry, Bonjo was introduced to Nyabinghi drumming, aged six or seven. Possessed by percussion, he also picked up techniques, primarily Kumina, from a local Poco church, run by Mother Hibbert, a relative of The Maytals’ Toots. Tuning into music’s healing power. The traditional ceremonies of the neighbouring Indian community were also a big influence. Bonjo relocated to London when he was sixteen. Shocked by the cold – he had never seen snow – he picked up work roadie-ing for artists such as Desmond Dekker and Dandy Livingstone. Demonstrating his trance-inducing chops on the congas, while setting up, eventually saw him sitting in on gigs. He would also sing backing harmonies for Dekker. Subsequently becoming somewhat of a road warrior – for example Bonjo featured in the touring line-up of The Foundations for while, the group behind the’ soul smash “Build Me Up Buttercup” – he in addition joined a couple of bands, namely Fusion and Freedom Fighter. While touring with Dillinger he met drummer Charlie “Eskimo” Fox, who was part of Creation Rebel. Through Charlie, Bonjo then met Adrian.
A common misconception is that the first African Head Charge record was produced in response to a comment made by Brian Eno, who when talking about the album, My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, had spoken about his “vision of a psychedelic Africa”. While Eno did inspire the African Head Charge LP’s title, My Life In A Hole In The Ground – it was actually recorded without any preconceived plan or concept. It was simply raw experimentation. The two friends, locked-in, enjoying themselves. Bonjo recalls that it was a spontaneous, spiritual thing – “It just happens!” “I used to go and put out four, five, six or seven different drum tracks. Adrian would record everything. Even if I was just sound-checking.” Sherwood would focus on studio trickery, running recordings backward and forwards. Setting reverbs sucking on snares and delays. Rule-breaking and radical. Trying to get the label’s wares noticed.
Released in the autumn of 1981, the label joked that the album was “Another 1991 On-U Sound Creation”, and ten years ahead of its time, when in fact it was likely much more forward thinking and prophetic than that. Songs like “Stebeni’s Theme” – frequencies flickering around its cute call-and-response – are now considered seminal pieces of electronics, and arguably help set the template for future genres, such as tribal house. The record also found a firm fan in Ministry’s Al Jourgensen, who invited Adrian to produce the Chicago band’s next LP. The resulting record, Twitch, again, became a benchmark, this time for Industrial music.
African Head Charge follow-ups were produced, at the rate of roughly one a year. Each pushing in a new direction. Environmental Studies (1982) was full of “found sounds”, and it was Adrian’s intention to mix these “ambient” elements, such as the rush of running water, above the levels of the instruments. He made the march of the drums distant by recording them in the studio’s stone toilet. On the track, “Dinosaur’s Lament”, On-U label co-runner and sleeve Kishi Yamamoto adds layers of ethereal, Chinese harp. Dynamite deviant dub it most definitely is, but reggae it most definitely is not.
1983’s Drastic Season marked a move from Berry Street to Southern Studios. The words “wired”, and “speed-fuelled” have appeared in related interviews. Described by Adrian as being constructed of tape edits upon tape edits. Pre-samplers, these were all cut and spliced by hand, searching for rhythms within rhythms. The outcome was edgy and paranoid, reflecting the times Something like “Bazaar” fuses vocal fragments with synthetic Middle Eastern spirals. Its stop-start groove close to completely deconstructed.
Off The Beaten Track emerged in 1986, recorded in the wake of Adrian’s radical studio work with the crack group of musicians that were known alternately as The Maffia, Fats Comet, and Tackhead (not to mention formerly having comprised the house band that helped birthed hip-hop as the Sugarhill Gang). The new AHC record contained contributions from Skip McDonald, a core member of those crews. Skip guested on the melancholy, “Language & Mentality”, which Bonjo considers African Head Charge’s “breakthrough” tune. Borrowing a bit of profound Einstein dialogue, the song was a big hit with London students. This led to a demand for live appearances, and in part, caused the studio project to become an ensemble that could be taken out on the road. In turn, Bonjo took on more of a prominent bandleader role. Skip also continued to stay involved, and proved crucial to how African Head Charge’s sound would evolve. Bonjo refers to Skip as, “The greatest musician that I’ve ever worked with. The top. Number one.”
The next decade saw a shift away from the amphetamine-driven, science fiction dancehall shenanigans, toward sets more like modern Rasta grounations. Songs Of Praise (1990), Bonjo’s favourite African Head Charge album, sampled and segued sacred musics and words of worship from around the globe, and was almost pop, compared to the rest of On-U’s canon. Plainsong sat next to mad possessed shaman, dervishes dances alongside deep south evangelists, in machine-assisted, technology-twisted drum circle rituals designed to have all hearts, regardless of race or denomination, heading toward one destination, peace. The album was hugely influential and its impact can clearly be heard in the work of the next generation of UK dub producers, particularly artists like Alpha & Omega and The Rootsman.
1993’s In Pursuit Of Shashamane Land, is African Head Charge at their most melodic. Trippy tropical elements are woven around beautiful bass-lines, and big levee-breaking beats. Haunting harmonies sing hymns to happiness. The LP found Bonjo, in amongst the marvellous muscular Tackhead-esque funk of tunes like Fever Pitch, reaching out for his spiritual home, Africa. A year later, he made that physical trip, and relocated to Ghana.
Financial setbacks, such as a series of distributors going bust, meant that African Head Charge didn’t return to On-U Sound until 2005’s Eno-acknowledging Vision Of A Psychedelic Africa. A set created with all three members of Tackhead, not just Skip, but Doug Wimbish and Keith LeBlanc as well. The heavenly highlife of “Ready You Ready” was a sunny summer’s day collage of children’s choir, singing cicadas and frogs, whose scurrying dub details nodded back to the 1980s, and New Age Steppers, while simultaneously hinting at things to come.
Voodoo Of The Godsent (2011) righteously resurrected and celebrated the tragically departed “Voice Of Thunder”, Prince Far I, on “Take Heed And Smoke Up Your Collyweed”. Remembering Far I, Bonjo has said, “He reminds me of one of the great prophets, he had such presence.” The soaring, spirit-raising chants of “In “I” Head” were a flashback to Songs Of Praise.
The on-going On-U Sound reissue programme of recent years brought fans Return Of The Crocodile and Churchical Chant Of The Iyabinghi, two essential collections of outtakes and alternative dubs. The appearance of the track, “Flim”, on 2019’s contemporary label showcase Pay It All Back Volume 7, then suggested that something new was on the way.