The Very Best – 'MTMTMK' review
Twenty years ago The Very Best – Malawian carpenter Esau Mwamwaya and Swedish house producer Johan Hugo – would’ve been called “fusion” and excitedly lapped up by chin-scratching lefties across north London. To today’s genre-busting, collaboration-acclimatised ears, though, their European-engineered Afro-pop doesn’t hold as much shock appeal. As such, they live and die far more on the quality of their songwriting which, on their second album, is frustratingly erratic.
The astonishing Bantu, also starring Amadou & Mariam and Babaa Maal, is a wonderfully driving spiritual, layered with burbling electronics and produced with a subtle aggression, while Rudeboy genuinely does deserve the “fusion” tag, combining dubstep, Detroit house, African hi-life and much else besides into an infectious slab of truly modern-sounding pop. But elsewhere, unfortunately, MTMTMK strays into the sort of Euro-dance smash territory normally occupied by LMFAO and Black Eyed Peas, and the tinny bounce of Kondaine and We OK sound little better than tepid Soviet-Bloc Eurovision entries.
5/10
