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With an adventurous and daring take on instrumental afrobeat, Super Yamba Band’s Last Leap EP takes listeners back to 2014, the band’s formative year. “We had just moved to Brooklyn—Walter, Sean, Evan, and I,” said Daniel Yount, the band’s founder and drummer, “and our only plan for ‘making it’ was to just play as much music together as possible.”
Finally released from the Yamba archives, the Last Leap EP is a sonic timestamp of the band’s creative energy during those very special first days in New York City. “We were excited, inspired—and probably a little overwhelmed. We wanted to record a few of our tunes so that we could have something for the clubs to listen to as we were trying to book gigs,” Yount explained. “From there, we immediately fell into playing shows at Harlem’s African music clubs—places like Silvana and Shrine—as well as DIY dance parties in Brooklyn.” The result of all of this, Yount said, was “a sound that we intentionally designed to keep people dancing for as long as possible.”
From the early days of the Last Leap sessions, Super Yamba Band never relented. Today the group has gained notoriety in the global afrobeat and afrofunk scenes largely through its extensive touring and Ubiquity Records releases with singer, composer, and guitarist, Leon Ligan-Majek, aka Kaleta, a veteran of the genre. “Our project with Kaleta gained traction so fast, we basically put these masters on the shelves and forgot about them,” Yount explained. “Years later we went back to listen—with fresh ears—and it was reinvigorating. We’re going to keep exploring these sounds and pushing the limits of what an instrumental, afrobeat-centric band can be, even as we continue to double-down on our work with Kaleta.” |
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