OccultHawk

Reminds me more of the Grateful Dead than Fela Kuti. The songs groove but at the same time you’re kind of left waiting for them to take off. I get the impression that this record is full of tracks that would grow on me but haven’t had time. I know it’s a pretty simple question. Did you like the album or not? I did, but still, I think there’s more to it that I can’t appreciate in just one week. I’ll revisit it. I’m going with a somewhat ill-informed 3 Stars which is a good review.

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MicShazam

So many albums these days make me sad. Musically great albums let down by pretty bad, overdone production choices. Sometimes I get a newly released album that sounds really amazing and it blows my mind, especially because it's so rare.

Neapolitan

I never heard of Ofege before. i didn't know what to expect. I played it half way through earlier this week, and thought the album had potential. I finally got to listen to it in its entirety today. I played the whole album (while I was working writing.) I didn't pay much attention to the song titles, so this review won't comment on individual songs.

70s music is my thing. This album fits in to the music from that era. I am not familiar with music from Africa. Recently I stumble across the Lijadu Sisters who are also from Nigeria but I only know few songs by them.

I look for some information on the band I came across an article on nowagainrecords.com that callsd them "The ultimate in West African psychedelic funk." it also said they were influence by the Nigerian bands BLO, and also Led Zeppelin and Santana. Other than what was stated, I really do not know exactly who influenced this group however as the album went on I could help but think the drummer sounded a little like Drumbo - maybe, maybe not. The thought of them getting a copy of a Captain Beefheart album and then being inspired by it seems impossible, yet amusing to me. Who knows? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I thought about what Goofle about being recorded in the 60s. It does has the Farfisa (type) organ which was more prevalent in the 60s. However other things about it I think it fits in the year it was released. I can see his point, the "wah wah" and and long guitar jams started in the late 60s, however that style extends to the years prior to Disco.

It was a good album over-all, I will probably listen to it again. Good pick.

I rate it 85/100.

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MicShazam

The funky, bluesy music was often good and I liked the drums a lot when they were given more space. I'm not sure what this reminds me of the most, but I don't think this album is anything too unique. The major downside of this was the vocals. It's rare that a singer comes off as downright annoying to me, but this guy did, at several points of the album. At the worst of times, he's a downright weak singer, plus his syrupy, bright Michael-Jackson-doing-interviews voice didn't exactly charm me. Maybe if he had sung in his native tongue, it would have worked it abit better in some ways, but it wasn't really a problem with accent.

Kind of hard to rate. Allright music, but it's nothing too out the the ordinary for the genre. Bad vocalist. Guess that pretty much has to be a below average score from me, then.

4/10

Trollheart

Found this quite boring and dull. I agree the vocalist is very annoying, and I also see the comparisons with Santana - whoever is on the guitar certainly knows what he's doing and when it's left to instrumental or mostly instrumental music then it's not too bad at all. But once that guy opens his mouth, he's like someone trying to do a Caribbean affectation, and not very well. "It's Not Easy" is an example of this; taken on its own, the long instrumental intro, I think, hey this might be ok. Then he opens his mouth. Shut the **** up!

The lyrics are pretty awful too. One line in "You Say No" sums this up for me, as far as the vocalist is concerned, anyway: "If you don't like me I'll hate you."

It's a ****ing deal!

Take that guy out and I might have rated higher. As it is, a weak 4/10 is the best I feel this deserves.

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OccultHawk

If he’s Nigerian the Caribbean thing is actually rooted in his own culture, isn’t it?

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TechnicLePanther

So I heard Nobody Falls on the radio, and I was like, "Oh that sounds pretty cool." Then I arrived home and listened to the first few songs, and I was like, this is cool. Then I needed an album rec so I just recd this without actually listening to much of it. Glad to hear now that the album doesn't take a horrible dip in quality.

Anyway, this is a pretty good album IMO, a couple songs are not as great in quality, and the whole thing is just really, really dated. And even for the time, this is nothing groundbreaking or particularly exciting. But the great performances and solid songwriting really pull through for me here. (It also helps that I don't find the vocalist annoying at all.) 8/10

Radiohead - Amnesiac
Ofege - Try And Love
Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak

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Trollheart

I guess, but he doesn't sound genuine. Not to me, anyway. Maybe it's just that I hate his voice.

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Anteater

Ofege - Try and Love

A fairly busy sounding African funk experience, which swings between working well ('It Ain't Easy') and just being "meh" (the wah-wahs don't mix well with the drums on 'Nobody Fails') depending on the song. As others have pointed out, the guitar work is generally fantastic and the overall atmosphere is pretty nice...like a more chilled out Fela Kuti.

What surprised me the most is how everything is sung in English, which isn't a bad thing but I'm guessing that means these guys were shooting for an international audience at one point. Like if you go back to the early 70's and look at the R&b/soul/funk coming out of Hungary or parts of Indonesia very little of it was sung in English. It works in this case, but I still found it interesting.

6 out of 10

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Neapolitan

They are not from Hungary or Indonesia, they're from Nigeria. The official language of Hungary is Hungarian, the official language of Indonesia is Indonesian. The official langue of Nigeria is (wait for it) ... English. There is over 500 languages spoken in Nigeria. Many Nigerians speak two languages, their native language and English, which is used as a lingua franca. Today there are 60,000,000 English speaking people in Nigeria. I am surprised that you are surprised that they sung in English.

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