Intuitive Music

Afro Celt Sound System celebrates their ten year anniversary fusing world music and electronica. In that decade their four albums and a remix collection have sold a staggering 1.2 million albums and contributed to the soundtrack of the Oscar-nominated Hotel Rwanda. With "Anatomic", they’ve taken a profound trip into their hearts and souls and once again the Afro Celts have grown. This time six of the nine tracks began with members Martin Russell and James McNally collaborating in the studio, "with James playing the bodhran, and building from there," Russell recalls, "so things had his rhythmic interpretation on them as a base." From there the Afro Celt Magic took over as each of the band members added their unique signatures in the group’s London studio. N’Faly Kouyate’s kora parts interwove with Simon Emmerson’s guitar and bouzouki hooks while a rhythm section combined live and programmed beats with world class dhol, tabla and talking drum, and McNally’s virtuosic multi-instrumentalism layered in whistle tunes and top line pipe melodies with keyboards and guitars. Finally, with all the pieces in place, the massive tapestry of sound was bound together and brought into focus by Russell and Mass’s keyboard and drum programming.

"Anatomic" adds another storey to that edifice. It also continues the longstanding Afro Celt tradition of cultural collaboration, bringing in two stunning vocalists – Uzbeki star Sevara Nazarkhan and Rwanda’s Dorothee Munyaneza – who add their own special qualities to the disc. The album also includes two previously unrecorded concert staples, ‘Drake’ – originally written for Release – and the atmospheric, spectacular ‘Mojave’, a tune that still affects the band "in a simplified way that a lot of other things do in a complicated way. Iarla opens up with a call, it sounds Native American, and it brought us to that wide-open vast space of Mojave. The rhythm’s hard and pounding, but the tune is soft and invites you in. That one comes purely from the heart."