Ibibio Sound Machine's 'Chopping Mountain' Is a Joyous Masterpiece of Studio-Jam Discipline
Six albums in, Ibibio Sound Machine have stopped needing an outside producer to tell them what they are. Chopping Mountain, out on Merge, is produced by saxophonist and co-founder Max Grunhard — his first turn at the board for the band since 2019’s Doko Mien — and recorded primarily at Vanguard Studios in South London, which the band owns. Every one of these ten tracks started as a studio jam.
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: PK Ambrose’s bass and Joseph Amaoko’s drums, with Afla Sackey’s percussion woven through them, are given room that a hired producer might have compressed away — the groove breathes between hits, which is what makes music this dense feel light. The Spatial Dynamics: Grunhard’s great decision is refusing to choose between the horns and the synthesizers. Scott Baylis’s trumpet and Tony Hayden’s trombone are placed hard and bright against Grunhard’s own sax and synth lines, with Alfred Bannerman’s guitar threading between, and Eno Williams’s vocal sitting dead center and untouched by the electronics around it. At The Barrier called the band “anything but the one-trick pony that the lazy label of Afrotronica suggests,” and credited Grunhard with “stoking all the fires fully from within.”
Standout Performance
Eno Williams, whose reading of “Concept of Love” carries the record’s thesis. “What you give out into the world is what you receive back,” she has said of it. “It’s beautiful to be loved.”
Why It’s Certified
“Burning in Lagos” opens hot, “Give Me Peace” brings in Dele Sosimi of Fela Kuti’s Egypt 80, and “River Don’t Rush” lands the ending. Merge calls it the clearest rendering yet of the band’s mission to promote love, unity and resistance through music, and for once the label copy is underselling it. Certified great.