New Music: Concept Of Love

           

The London collective Ibibio Sound Machine has made a dizzy, cross-cultural form of party music, rooted both in disco and in the Afrobeat that frontwoman Eno Williams grew up with. Now, the collective are ready to announce Chopping Mountain, a new album that's coming later this summer. Ibibio Sound Machine recorded the follow-up to 2024's Pull The Rope at their own South London studios. After they worked with outside collaborators on their last couple of LPs, this one sees band member Max Grunhard once again acting as producer, a role he last occupied on 2019's Doko Mien. Their new single "Concept Of Love" is a dizzy, joyous, robo-funk celebration in which Eno Williams switches back and forth between the English and Ibibio languages. She says that the song "went through many different stages and ended with a soulful, electronic Afro-disco feel.