A posthumous Tony Allen album is on the way. There Is No End will be the pioneering drummer’s final studio album and will be released on the day he died. There is No End is a collaborative album where Tony Allen felt the desire to work with younger artists, especially rappers. Among those on the record include Danny Brown, Sampa The Great, Nate Bone & Skepta. The first single from the record, “Cosmosis” featuring Ben Okri and Skepta is available now.
Nigerian novelist and poet Ben Okri describes the process and inspiration for “Cosmosis.”
“We were in the studio with Damon Albarn and Remi Kabaka and Tony said, 'I lay out this universe in which dreams can come forth,' and then I understood that for him the beat he lays out is like this textual landscape. It has a psychic structure or DNA of a universe of music for which Tony had worked out a kind of mathematical basis for it in his elliptical beats, and then an invitation to dream could been given.”
Allen died before most of the rappers could record with him, but he and producer Vincent Taeger had already recorded the grooves.
As Taeger explains, “Tony's idea was to give rappers the space to breathe and freely create. He wanted really not to just do Afrobeat, but rather something new and open, with very different sounds for the drums for each song and feels and tempos that were really grounded to the core in hip hop.”
There is No End will be released on April 30 on Decca France. Pre-order the album here and find the tracklist below.
Tracklist:
1. Tony’s Praeludium
2. Stumbling Down (Featuring Sampa The Great)
3. Crushed Grapes (Featuring Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon)
4. Très magnifique (Featuring Tsunami)
5. Mau Mau (Featuring Nah Eeto)
6. Coonta Kinte (Featuring Zelooperz)
7. Rich Black (Featuring Koreatown Oddity)
8. One Inna Million (Featuring Lava La Rue)
9. Gang On Holiday (Em I Go We?) (Featuring Jeremiah Jae)
10. Deer In Headlights (Featuring Danny Brown)
11. Hurt Your Soul (Featuring Nate Bone)
12. My Own (Featuring Marlowe)
13. Cosmosis (Featuring Ben Okri + Skepta)
14. There’s No End
