Tony Allen

Tony Allen – The Source (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:04:43 minutes | 1,31 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Blue Note Records

On September 8, Afrobeat legend Tony Allen will release The Source, the Nigerian-born Paris-based drummer’s debut full-length album for Blue Note Records, following the tantalizing 4-track EP release A Tribute to Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.

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Tony Allen – Rejoice (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 38:16 minutes | 809 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © World Circuit

‘Rejoice’ is a very special collaboration between Tony Allen, the co-founder of Afrobeat, and Hugh Masekela, the master of South African jazz. Having first met in the 70s thanks to their respective close associations with Fela Kuti, the two world-renowned musicians talked for decades about making an afrobeat album together. When, in 2010, their touring schedules coincided in the UK, the moment presented itself and producer Nick Gold took the opportunity to record their encounter. The unfinished sessions, consisting of all original compositions by the pair, lay in archive until after Hugh passed away in 2018. With renewed resolution, Tony Allen and Nick Gold, with the blessing and participation of Hugh’s estate, unearthed the original tapes and finished recording the album in summer 2019 at the same London studio where the original sessions had taken place. ‘Rejoice’ can be seen as the long overdue confluence of two mighty African musical rivers – a union of two free-flowing souls for whom borders, whether physical or stylistic, are things to pass through or ignore completely. According to Allen, the album deals in “a kind of South African-Nigerian swing-jazz stew”, with its roots firmly in afrobeat.

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Tony Allen – There Is No End (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 42:42 minutes | 919 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Blue Note Records

The Afrobeat legend Tony Allen died in the spring of 2020 at the age of 79. The year prior, the iconic drummer wrote and produced all of the beats for a newly announced album: There Is No End is out on April 30, the anniversary of Allen’s death, via Blue Note.

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Tony Allen – Film Of Life {Deluxe Version} (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:08:54 minutes | 805 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Jazz Village

For his tenth album, the human metronome of afrobeat has pulled out all the stops. At his side are The Jazzbastards, a trio of producers at the cutting edge of contemporary sound, and fellow world-class musicians, including Damon Albarn, who continues to build pioneering bridges between Africa and today’s music scene. Tony Allen has given us an album that has the ring of a true self-portrait, an overview of his rich and exemplary career that brings together bebop, afrobeat jazz and psychedelic pop. For the wizard of Lagos, who has always thought of his drums “as an orchestra” and who likes “to make them sing”, Film of Life marks the pinnacle of his achievement.

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Tony Allen – A Tribute To Art Blakey And The Jazz Messengers EP (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 24:26 minutes | 530 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Universal Music Division Decca Records France

Whether he’s playing with Fela Kuti or Damon Albarn, the Nigerian drummer Tony Allen rarely compromises. “I don’t play funk or jazz,” he says. “I play Afrobeat.” This 25-minute mini-album, his first release for Blue Note, ostensibly pays tribute to one of the great hard-bop bandleaders, but Allen still refuses to deviate from his own personal pulse a jittery, back-to-front pattern that sounds like he’s constantly soloing. Allen doesn’t actually “swing” at all on these four standards associated with Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, instead putting each through his own Afrobeat prism. Moanin’ is reinvented in straight eighths, Politely is played in a rocking 6/8 rhythm, while A Night in Tunisia is transformed into a series of wonderfully jerky, disjointed riffs. Throughout, Allen’s Parisian septet improvises inventively around these unusual meters, most impressively on the Drum Thunder Suite, where one of Blakey’s many flirtations with West African music is, in turn, Africanised.

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Tony Allen – Secret Agent (2022 Remaster) (2009/2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 54:14 minutes | 697 MB | Genre: Jazz, World
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © World Circuit

For fifteen years, Tony Allen drummed for Fela Kuti and invented Afrobeat with him. When Kuti died in 1997, Tony Allen did everything he could to protect and promote his musical legacy. This is especially true for the political content of Afrobeat: insurgent resistance, protest, freedom struggles. Various Nigerian singers and the Tony Allen touring band create the insane sound from the African motherland of Afrobeat – Nigeria – in real time. Hypnotic vocals and the muscle-bound brass passages create a rhythm that flows into the blood without detours – a joy-fest for every aficionado of African music. The band moves in the tradition of Fela Kuti’s formation “Afrika 70”. Even if Tony Allen calls his album “Secret Agent” – there is no sense of secrecy here. It is pure music that needs the light of day like a fish needs water.

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