Label: Merge Records
Release date: 22.03.2019
Format Info: WHITE VINYL
Extras: BONUS CD EP

Eno Williams, frontwoman of Ibibio Sound Machine, uses both English and the Nigerian language from which her band’s name is derived for the dazzling new album Doko Mien. Long lauded for jubilant, explosive live shows, Ibibio Sound Machine fully capture that energy on Doko Mien, the followup to their Merge debut Uyai. In a glowing piece in the New York Times, those songs were praised for following “in the tradition of much African music, [making] themselves the conscience of a community.” By pulsing the mystic shapes of Williams’ lines through further inventive, glittering collages of genre, Ibibio Sound Machine crack apart the horizon separating cultures, between nature and technology, between joy and pain, between tradition and future. That propensity for duality and paradox seems common in people whose lives span continents. Williams was born in the UK, but grew up in Nigeria, always steeped in her family heritage. She obsessed over West African electronic music, highlife, and the like, but was equally empowered by Western genres such as post-punk, disco, and funk.
SIDE A I Need You ToBe Sweet Like Sugar (Nnge Nte Suka), Wanna Come Down, Tell Me (Doko Mien), I Know That You’re Thinking About Me, I Will Run.
SIDE B Just Go Forward (Ka I So), She Work Very Hard, Nyak Mien, Kuka, Guess We Found a Way.