Tony Allen, legendary drummer, was working on it when he disappeared last year: here
is There is no end
, iconoclastic and hard-hitting album, like its author, who rubs shoulders with young rappers here.
“When he left it was very hard.
A month later, his record company and his manager contacted me: “you had made good progress, you have to respect the will of the master and finish this album”, ”
says Vincent Taeger.
An accomplice producer, he had been working alongside this Afrobeat guru and Fela Kuti's traveling companion for ten years.
Read also: Death of Tony Allen, legendary drummer and afrobeat pioneer
As he was preparing to celebrate his 80th birthday, in particular with an event concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Nigerian drummer died on April 30, 2020 at the age of 79, in the Paris region, where he had settled.
Between his various collaborations - notably with Damon Albarn, whether within Gorillaz or The Good, the Bad and the Queen - Tony Allen had at the time embarked on an unexpected project.
"Tony wanted to make a rap album, he wanted rappers' featurings, especially young people, boys and girls, but not with the same codes as usual"
, summarizes Vincent Taeger, himself a former drummer of the French group Poni Hoax .
"Groove, party, dance"
"Tony has always loved hip-hop - with Fela there was already the groove, the party, the dancing all night long like in the first rap sound systems
,
"
explains Eric Trosset, who was Allen's manager.
“He had already produced beats with Vincent since the spring of 2019 and finished
Cosmosis
in March 2020, the only title Tony had finished with a rapper,”
he continues.
Cosmosis
, already released as a single, confronts the rhythm and groove of Tony Allen with the stamps of the English rapper Skepta, of Nigerian origin, and the Nigerian novelist Ben Okri.
It's just a sample, of poetic inspiration and not necessarily representative of
There is no end
(
“There is no end”
), eclectic and effective, which comes out this Friday at Blue Note.
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Rich Black
, with the starchy flow of the American Koreatown Oddity makes big nods to club atmospheres, while
Très Magnifique
gives off a little scent of Tom Waits, as Taeger says, with the rocky grain of voice of the 'American Tsunami.
And it is the Briton Lava La Rue who brilliantly takes up the challenge of the tempo-marathon imposed by Allen on
One Inna Million
.
"A smuggler"
Was it dizzying to finish the job without the chief architect?
"I said to myself at the beginning, 'shit Tony is not there anymore, it will be very different", because he obviously wanted to meet rappers all over the world for the recordings, "
says Vincent Taeger.
"But he trusted me, he knew that I had the same language as him"
, underlines the one who calls himself Tiger Tigre for his solo projects.
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I am African
: Rachid Taha, more alive than ever
So as not to be alone faced with certain choices, Taeger called on Vincent Taurelle, another musician-researcher, Allen's collaborator on
Film of Life
or
The Source
.
“I needed another energy and Tony would have validated,”
explains Taeger.
"We managed to make an album that looks like Tony with featurings of super good artists, not all known (except Skepta, Editor's note), which will be put forward, Tony was a smuggler"
, welcomes Tiger again. Tiger. The Kenyan Nah Eeto is illustrated on
Mau Mau
.
Tony Allen obviously wanted to bring this album to life on stage. Impossible mission ?
“I thought about it,”
Taeger says.
There are a lot of great drummers, like Quest Love (The Roots), Anderson .Paak (drummer and rapper), they knew him, they could do some shows, to show Tony's style ”
.