NOVEMBER 2024 ISSUE
A sneaky peek of just some of what is in the November 2024 issue – OUT NOW!
AMY STEELE
When last we spoke with Amy Steele – in 2018 – she was working on a debut EP that wasn’t quite complete and in the end never came out. Yes, as ever, you can thank COVID for that: by the time she’d approached finishing it, the world had closed down and everything changed.
Now, as the talented Amy takes her place on a second Echoescover, she is once again well into what’s intended to be at least a seven – possibly even a nine – track EP that’s set for release in the early spring of 2025, following on from a live session due on Youtube before Christmas, plus a lead single in January, and about to lift the handbrake on what has all the trappings of an exciting musical adventure.
On this occasion, however, Amy and her sister/manager Nicole are speaking to me not face to face in a central London café [where we previously met] but via Zoom from Los Angeles. Why so? Because, typically, Amy is still writing, still creating and refining the music that best represents where she is now. And honestly, it’s a lot sunnier out there on the West Coast.
NATTY
When I rang Natty for our interview, the rain was coming down in torrents. Three months earlier, Hurricane Beryl had wreaked havoc across the island of Jamaica. Nearly 9,000 homes were destroyed, along with countless people’s livelihoods. Farmers were among the worst hit and Natty considers himself lucky by comparison after the trees and crops on his land in the hills above White River, just half an hour’s drive from Ocho Rios, suffered only minimal damage.
He, his wife and their seven children left London for Jamaica three years ago. They’d caught the last flight from Heathrow just before the second Covid lockdown was announced and it took them a while to find the home where they live now on the border of St Mary and St Ann, surrounded by nature and kindly neighbours.
“Jamaica is beautiful,” he says. “I’ve got a lot of land, so when we first came here we planted lots of trees. We’ve got ackee, coconut, mango, banana and breadfruit trees… “
LAST POETS
“This is the time that we who have benefitted from The Last Poets should be able to say, ‘It’s the Last Poets. It’s them we should be honouring, because we did not honour them for so many years.”
KRS One wasn’t just addressing the hip-hop fraternity when he narrated the introduction to Invocation, a poem written 30 years ago, around the time of a previous Last Poets’ comeback. Their latest has led to an album, Africanism, released on Africa Seven, that’s a thrilling synthesis of rap, jazz and Afrobeat.
The project started when Tony Allen, the Nigerian master drummer behind much of Fela Kuti’s best work, dropped by Prince Fatty’s Brighton studio sometime in 2019 and laid down a selection of drum patterns intended for The Last Poets, whose then recent masterpiece, Understand What Black Is, had found them chanting fiery diatribes over reggae rhythms. It had seemed an unlikely alliance, yet the combination worked brilliantly and even spawned a terrific dub album. It made fusing the Poets’ militant ardour with Afrobeat less of a risk somehow. After all, both genres share a revolutionary mindset – the Poets in everything they touch and Afrobeat, thanks mainly to Fela Kuti.
CARVALHO
20 Questions with Rob Carvalho
DO YOU THINK THE STREAMING SERVICES WILL EVER PAY MUSICIANS PROPERLY?
It’s crazy isn’t it: musicians have had to become so resourceful because of this. I think the more musicians voices are heard, streaming services will have to change. From what I’m seeing, more musicians are pointing this out. Simple really: if musicians were to pull off all their music, then what happens?
WHAT ARE YOUR NEIGHBOURS LIKE?
All I’m saying is… shared drive wars. Otherwise, I’ll be taken to court for defamation. Heh. Sensible answer – could be better.
