African Head Charge - Churchical Chant Of The Iyabinghi (LP)

African Head Charge has always felt like a portal, a doorway you slip through on a late night when the dub is thick and the lights are low. Churchical Chant Of The Iyabinghi, released in 2020 on On-U Sound, is one of those doors. It is a collection that leans into the project’s devotional side, drawing from the rich vocabulary of Nyabinghi drumming and the studio sorcery that producer Adrian Sherwood has refined for decades. At the center is Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah, the heartbeat of African Head Charge, whose drums and chants give the music its ritual pull.

The title telegraphs the intent. Nyabinghi rhythms are not just grooves, they are a living practice within Rastafari, a circle of funde, bass drum, and repeater that carries prayer and protest in equal measure. African Head Charge takes that pulse and sends it through the echo chambers of London, a city that gave Sherwood a lab full of tape, spring reverb, and AMS delays. The result is weighty but aerated, a mix of earth and vapor. Bass sits like a low ember. Percussion flickers around it. Voices drift in, half hymn and half hallucination.

This set arrived as part of a broader On-U Sound campaign to bring key chapters of the group’s catalog back into print, and it plays like a companion to the much-loved Songs Of Praise era. The mood is spiritual, sometimes hushed, sometimes booming. You get pieces that feel like processions, the drums stepping forward with patient resolve, and then sections where Sherwood pours space over everything until the edges melt. There is a sense of assembly, of fragments and versions that lock together into a coherent whole. It does not feel like a dustbin of outtakes. It feels like a careful map of how African Head Charge builds its trance.

What I love here is the tactility. You can almost touch the skin of the drums, hear the fingertips, the heels, the little air pocket that follows a hard strike. Sherwood gives the percussion a lot of room, so when the bass enters, it changes the temperature of the track rather than bulldozing it. Horn stabs and vocal scraps appear as signs rather than leads. It is music that invites you to lean in, to pick up small details at the edges. That is where African Head Charge lives, in those liminal spaces where a chant becomes a loop, where a ritual cadence becomes a dance rhythm.

Spin Churchical Chant Of The Iyabinghi on a decent system and the room breathes differently. The bottom is deep but nimble, the kind of low end you feel in your ribs without it turning to mush. The midrange is all texture, shakers and sticks and the ripple of skin on wood. For anyone browsing for African Head Charge vinyl, this one rewards that itch to hear the physicality of the music, to let the needle trace those circles the way a hand traces the rim of a drum. Churchical Chant Of The Iyabinghi vinyl reissues have helped a new wave of listeners line it up next to Songs Of Praise and In Pursuit Of Shashamane Land, and it belongs there. It is not a greatest hits set. It is a process record, a peek into how a signature sound is carved.

African Head Charge started as a collision of ideas that could only really happen under the On-U Sound umbrella. Sherwood’s studio-as-instrument approach, the deep roots of Bonjo’s playing, and a rotating cast of sharp London players gave the project its shapeshifting character. Across the decades that combination moved from abrasive early experiments to the more expansive spiritual dub of the 90s and beyond, and you can hear that arc reflected here. If you followed the thread all the way to A Trip To Bolgatanga in 2023, with Bonjo drawing from Ghanaian connections, this 2020 set feels like a signpost that still points forward.

If you are crate digging or looking to buy African Head Charge records online, this is an easy recommendation. It fills a real gap for anyone exploring African Head Charge albums on vinyl and wanting the devotional side presented in a way that flows. I have seen copies tucked in import bins from London to a Melbourne record store, and even on sites that ship vinyl records Australia wide. However you find it, treat it like a ritual. Put it on, let the air change, and follow the drums where they want to take you.