CASTLE MUSIC
Back to Castle Music Review Menu - reviewed
Osibisa - Sunshine day
Culled from their 3 albums from 1975 to 1980 including their massive hit Sunshine day. Strangely that track despite its commercial success is atypical. Most of the rest is infectious afro – british rhythms laden with percussion but with jazzy funky overtones, which helped make them successful in the UK right in the middle of the jazz funk era.
By and large the vocal tracks are let down by the ..er vocals and the beset tracks are the rhythm intensive ones. Seaside Meditation is chill before chill came in, Uhuru is pure Jazz FunkKolomashie is tribal, so there are lots of variations. The non album track Bum to Bum is particularly good, very soundtrackish and good British JF.
The Ojah awake is more Africam, more happy highlife, a bit more contrived even, the best being keep on trying. Dance the body music will be the second most well known track and far too poppy
Mystic Energy came a few years later in 1980, and was a bit harder on production Pata Pata being so infectious and not being too much of an African specialist the vibe seems to me to have shifted to east Coast from the West coast of the earlier stuff.
The best is pretty darn good but it’s not an album that I can see myself returning to too ofter..
Artist
Osibisa
Title
Sunshine Day
Label
Castle Music
Release Date
28/3/2005
Catalogue Number
CMDDD1109
Bar Code
5050749 411099
Format
CD
After several years of cult acclaim but little commercial reward, Afro/Caribbean-rock pioneers Osibisa broke through in 1975 with the smash hit ‘Sunshine Day’. That song is the ideal title track for a collection that selects the pick of their Bronze and Pye catalogues, to create a heady brew of rhythm, funk and summer vibes that is impossible to resist.
Visitors:
.