You won’t hear a better album made by a lad from Sweden and a lad from Malawi this year.
Flippancy aside, “Makes A King” is the most intriguing of the three records to date featuring Esau Mwamwaya and Johan Hugo since their fateful comingtogether via a London junk shop encounter.
It’s a smashing collage of tribal chants, wonky beats, skyward electronic grooves, African lilts and gritty found sounds all suited and booted to serve robust, well-honed songs.
Mwamwaya’s plaintive, meditative voice is the trump card, but it’s how the duo and the musicians, who joined them at recording sessions in the remote Malawian village of M’dala Chikowa, tackle themes of poverty, social exclusion and corrupt political systems which adds pathos galore to this.
You’ll shimmy and shake to “Sweka” and “Mwana Wanga”, but there’s a melancholic catch to “Hear Me” which will reel you back to the here and now.
