{"product_id":"ibibio-sound-machine-chopping-mountain","title":"Ibibio Sound Machine - Chopping Mountain","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIbibio Sound Machine\u003c\/strong\u003e’s new record, \u003cem\u003eChopping Mountain\u003c\/em\u003e, is the clearest rendering yet of the London collective’s longstanding mission to promote love, unity, and resistance through music. It is the band’s sixth full-length record, and the first to feature the band’s Max Grunhard as producer since 2019’s \u003cem\u003eDoko Mien\u003c\/em\u003e. Following their Hot Chip-produced breakthrough \u003cem\u003eElectricity\u003c\/em\u003e (2022) and the darker, clubbier inflection of the Ross Orton-produced \u003cem\u003ePull the Rope\u003c\/em\u003e (2024), \u003cem\u003eChopping Mountain\u003c\/em\u003e feels like it was pulled directly from the hearts and experiences of the Eno Williams and Grunhard-led band.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWilliams, as always, is a siren — a once-in-a-generation frontwoman whose call, both to the dancefloor and for a better tomorrow, is impossible to resist. How she does it is a mystery. Take a song like \u003cem\u003eReturn to Sender\u003c\/em\u003e, for instance. Inspired by a car accident in which she felt the steering wheel of her vehicle literally jump out of her hands — which she likened to “a spiritual attack by unseen forces” — the track is a sinewy, cathartic rager, a full-body workout and full-throated rejection of evil in multiple tongues, English and her native Ibibio.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe is, of course, hardly alone at the foot of \u003cem\u003eChopping Mountain\u003c\/em\u003e. Ibibio Sound Machine — Max Grunhard (saxophone, keyboards), Alfred Bannerman (guitar), PK Ambrose (bass, keyboards), Joseph Amoako (drums), Afla Sackey (percussion), Scott Baylis (trumpet, keyboards), and Tony Hayden (trombone, synth) — are supernaturally tight, drawing on their roots and inspirations in highlife, disco, afrobeat, funk, post-punk, and electropop to build towering cathedrals of sound around her voice.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eContinuing on the path they first charted on \u003cem\u003ePull the Rope\u003c\/em\u003e, many of \u003cem\u003eChopping Mountain\u003c\/em\u003e’s songs started out in jam sessions, locking in on a groove or an instrument or a lyric. \u003cem\u003eGive Me Peace\u003c\/em\u003e, featuring Dele Sosimi of Fela Kuti’s Egypt 80, found its way to bliss once the chant-sung lyrics “Give me peace, give me freedom, give me love with a kiss” tumbled out of Williams’ consciousness. The dub-inflected, breakbeat heavy soul that stirs to life beneath them — an entirely new sound for a band that has mastered blending a seemingly endless array of sounds — came naturally. “It’s about finding calm in a world that is trying to tear us down,” Williams and Grunhard explain. “Once we established that direction, the song seemed to write itself.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is, at its core, the spirit of \u003cem\u003eChopping Mountain\u003c\/em\u003e. Against the backdrop of a dispiriting world, Ibibio Sound Machine remain hopeful, seekers of consciousness and connection. On tracks like \u003cem\u003eConcept of Love\u003c\/em\u003e, they are direct and earnest, sculpting an Afro-disco song around Williams’ repeated question of “What is your concept of love?” They have their theory (“When you love someone \/ Let them love you back”) but the song passes the idea from member to member — a thrilling guitar solo from Bannerman, Baylis’ horn stings, vocoders, and precision drumfills — in a way that creates, almost paradoxically, a space in which one can meditate on the answer or move through it. Exploring the concept further on \u003cem\u003eLove\u003c\/em\u003e, they deliver an ethereal slice of highlife.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis heady brew of disparate styles and points of origin melds and pulls itself apart across the whole of \u003cem\u003eChopping Mountain\u003c\/em\u003e, its songs united in that they are the sharpest tools Ibibio Sound Machine can bring to bear in the present moment. They present the struggle for freedom as a communal one, in which even the smallest movement contributes to the end game. As Williams sings in the title track, “When pebble disturbs the water \/ Ripples over yonder \/ Force of a sling shot hits you \/ Chopping mountain rock asunder.” The work of liberation is long and difficult, but it is not without joy — here is an album bursting with it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MERGE","offers":[{"title":"Indies Exclusive Green Smoke 'Peak' Vinyl LP","offer_id":58199097049433,"sku":"SDZ-46761","price":26.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"Black Vinyl LP","offer_id":58199097082201,"sku":"SDZ-46762","price":26.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":58199097147737,"sku":"SDZ-46763","price":14.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0588\/3455\/0945\/files\/CAR_20260603_1000_090112_806_v_0673855088600_002_0853ff5b-6ba2-4a25-8a50-c27edf1f020c.jpg?v=1780480009","url":"https:\/\/spindizzyrecords.com\/products\/ibibio-sound-machine-chopping-mountain","provider":"Spindizzy Dublin","version":"1.0","type":"link"}