African Head Charge - Songs Of Praise (2LP)

Some records feel like they were dreamed into being. African Head Charge’s Songs of Praise is one of those, a 1990 On-U Sound release produced by Adrian Sherwood with percussion visionary Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah at its core. If you know the label’s unruly family tree, you can hear the DNA right away. Dub as laboratory craft. Deep roots drums, chants that sound older than the city that birthed the sessions, and a producer who hears negative space as another instrument. Sherwood once took inspiration from Brian Eno’s idea of a psychedelic Africa, and here that vision lands with gravity and grace.

What makes Songs of Praise so special is the way it turns devotion into texture. These pieces breathe. Bonjo’s hand drums lead with pulse and patience, leaving air for shakers, bells, and stray scraps of voice to flicker through. Sherwood builds the world around them in London studios, sending hits of spring reverb into the rafters and teasing harmonics out of the low end until the speakers hum like an organ drone. The record folds Rastafarian churchical rhythms into a dub architecture that feels both mystical and tactile. It is easy to get lost in the thrum, but there is order here. You can follow the drum patterns like stepping stones and feel each echo return as if you are standing beneath a vaulted ceiling.

Free Chant has become a calling card for the group over the decades, and you can hear why. It is stripped back but resonant, the kind of opening that sets a table then invites the room to sing along in spirit. Voices rise and fall as if carried on incense, but there is no gloss. It is all grain and skin and wood. The album keeps shifting like that. One track might lean almost monastic, another might let the bass lurch forward and take you into deeper dub space. The through line is purpose. Songs of Praise reads like a single suite that keeps renewing itself in waves.

Context helps. African Head Charge had already cut a run of records for On-U Sound through the 80s. Those early sides feel raw and exploratory. By the time they reached this one, the studio chemistry had set like resin. The result sits close to the heart of the catalog for a lot of listeners. It is often singled out as a high point for the label, a release that threads experimental ideas to something communal and grounded. If you have seen the group live, you know how these pieces can unfurl on stage, with Bonjo guiding the room through calls, responses, and rolling toms that seem to lengthen time.

Reissue culture has treated this record kindly. On-U Sound has brought it back to shelves in expanded and remastered editions, and the related set Churchical Chant of the Iyabinghi gathered session material from this era. That is good news for anyone hunting African Head Charge vinyl without paying collector prices. Put a clean Songs of Praise vinyl pressing on a decent system and it clicks. The bass gets that church-bell bloom. The cymbals turn into halos. Little details in the percussion jump out more clearly on wax than on compressed streams. It is the kind of record you file next to Dub Syndicate and Singers & Players, then pull again and again when the evening calls for a ritual that is more massage than ceremony.

If you are digging for a gateway into the catalog, start here. The sequencing is generous and immersive without bloat, and it sketches the qualities that make the group endure. It is spiritual music that does not posture, experimental music that does not sneer, and a dub record that remembers the drum. When friends ask where to begin and how to buy African Head Charge records online, this is the link I send first. And if you spot it in a Melbourne record store while flipping through African Head Charge albums on vinyl, do not hesitate. Even folks building a small stack of vinyl records Australia wide will find space for it. The record has a way of tidying the air in the room.

Thirty-plus years on, Songs of Praise still sounds fresh, which says something about the way it was built. Sherwood’s studio decisions feel like craft rather than trend, and Bonjo’s percussion carries the album like a spine. The specifics of era and place are there, but the effect is timeless. If you came here searching for African Head Charge vinyl, you already sense the pull. Take it home, cue it up, and let the first chant roll out. The rest takes care of itself.