Track Listing

1. Beaten Metal
2. Filbuster XXX
3. Sanctuary
4. Hilo
5. War Hero
6. ICE
7. Age

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #86868 in Music
• Released on: 2007-04-09
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
A ricochet of crossed-horn riffs open Antibalas's third album, Security, and what's immediately marvelous is the production, the lack of polish and purity in the tones. There's a ratty edge on Jordan McLean and Eric Biondo's trumpets, and Aaron Johnson's trombone only fattens the frays. The album's produced, engineered, and mixed by John McEntire, who made his name playing cold-blooded percussion in Tortoise, and he brings this Brooklyn-born twelvetet to the Lagos of Fela Kuti by lessening the sonic distinction between Chris Vatalaro's bass drum, his snare, and his tom-toms. The rhythm's a viscous fluid, stirred by vintage, lo-fi keyboards, slinking guitar riffs, and Stuart Bogie's tenor sax, which bears more than a hint of the roughened "Texas tenor" sound of 60s' hard bop. Antibalas is decidedly like Fela in that theirs is agit-Afro Beat, musically stirring in its core groupthink elements (rather than in flashes of solo genius). Tune into "Filibuster X," an excoriating call-and-response send-up of Republican presidential politics, and you'll hear the echoes of Fela's telltale vocal constructions, the clatter of politicized funk at its best. --Andrew Bartlett

Customer Reviews

Modern Afrobeat - one of the best live bands around
What? No reviews yet? Criminal.

Band-with-a-rotating-membership Antibalas dips back into the early 70's and then neatly sidestep most of the 80's and 90's, bringing things bang up to date. The more 'traditional' afrobeat sound of earlier albums has been warped into something more individual - and occasionally more dissonant - but ultimately just as a***-kicking (if not more so). Buy. See. Etc.