African Head Charge - Vision Of A Psychedelic Africa (2LP)

Adrian Sherwood and Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah didn’t just dust off a legacy when they brought African Head Charge back with Vision Of A Psychedelic Africa in 2005. They sharpened it. The project was born in the early 80s around a provocation often attributed to Brian Eno, a vision of a psychedelic Africa that fused dub’s low-end science with pan‑African percussion and heady studio experiments. This album feels like a conscious return to that founding spark, with Sherwood at the mixing desk and Bonjo driving the ritual core on hand drums and bells, chanting and call‑and‑response phrases threading through the haze.

What stands out first is space. Not emptiness, but the kind of living space you only get from a dub record built by an engineer who treats the desk as an instrument. Sherwood has been doing that since the beginning of On‑U Sound, and here the approach is as confident as ever. Bass notes fold into themselves, rimshots ricochet, and suddenly a clap of reverb opens a door to another room. You can close your eyes and feel the room where the percussion is happening, skins buzzing and sticks clicking, while a stray melodica or thumb piano figure floats by like a lantern.

Bonjo’s playing is the glue. He is steeped in Nyabinghi traditions, and that ceremonial pulse carries the whole record, even when the rhythms lean toward club tempo. There is a devotional quality to the way the grooves gather and release, a sense that repetition is the point because repetition becomes trance. When the vocals come in, they are often brief, almost like mantras. Lines about unity, strength, and uplift don’t arrive as slogans, they emerge from the rhythm bed and dip back under it again.

The album also reconnects with the adventurous thread that made earlier classics like Songs of Praise and In Pursuit of Shashamane Land so beloved. You hear it in the way African and Caribbean rhythmic languages talk to each other, and in the textures Sherwood pulls forward. Metallic shakers ride alongside drum choir patterns. A guitar figure sketches a desert horizon and then vanishes. The record never chases crossover thrills, it builds its own weather system. That is why fans return to African Head Charge vinyl again and again. On a good pressing you can feel the air moving around the drums and the way the sub bass hangs under the track like a floor.

If you came to On‑U Sound through Tackhead or Dub Syndicate and somehow skipped this one, it’s a rewarding late‑period entry. The chemistry between producer and percussionist feels renewed after the long gap since 1993, not nostalgic. Sherwood’s ear for detail is almost painterly, splashing spring reverb here, framing a chant there, dropping the bass to bring up a bell tree or cowbell pattern that had been hiding in the periphery. It plays like a live conversation, recorded layer by layer, then opened up with edits and effects until the conversation becomes a landscape.

Culturally, the title nods back to the famous spark that helped set the project in motion. But it also points ahead. Plenty of artists have explored the fusion of African polyrhythms and studio psychedelia, yet few arrive at something that feels this grounded. Vision Of A Psychedelic Africa sounds lived in and handmade. It’s global in scope, but it never loses the drum circle heartbeat at its center.

Collectors will want to keep an eye out for Vision Of A Psychedelic Africa vinyl, which does justice to the record’s depth and bass pressure. If you browse a Melbourne record store with a sturdy dub and reggae section, ask for African Head Charge albums on vinyl and see where the staff steer you. The On‑U Sound logo is a reliable sign you’re in safe hands. And if you’re building a cart to buy African Head Charge records online, pair this with Songs of Praise to hear the arc of the project. It’s the kind of set that reminds you why we still talk about records as journeys, not just playlists. For anyone curious about how dub can travel the world without losing its roots, this album is a fine guide, one that still sounds fresh spinning alongside new releases on the vinyl records Australia racks today.