FM435 Vinyl, CD, Music Cassette, Streaming & Dolby-Atmos Stream Release 17.10.2025
On his new album “The Afrodub Experience,” multi-instrumentalist and producer Umberto Echo takes us on a journey through time and space across four continents. With numerous collaborators, he explores 50 years of Afro-Caribbean music history.
The starting point is the Afrobeat of the 1970s. In the Berlin project “Afrobeat Academy” of the late 2000s, Umberto found inspiration through collaborations with original musicians from Fela Kuti’s band “Africa 70.” He began to fuse their music with dub and reggae. Originally intended as Umberto’s second album, the project continually takes new twists and turns, becoming a journey you might not want to end. 18 years later, “The Afrobeat Experience” is now released as Umberto Echo’s twelfth studio album on GLM Global Music and Oneness Records.
Similar to how dub emerged from the roots reggae of the 1970s, Umberto Echo approaches Afrobeat with its many rhythmic layers by isolating and re-melding musical levels, thus opening up a view of deeper sonic elements. Various protagonists join him on this journey, who significantly shape the album. Musicians from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Ghana, and Guinea-Bissau enrich the spectrum, as do singers from Jamaica and Barbados. Jazz musicians and co-producers from New York to Hamburg to Melbourne inspire each other and give the project a unique character over time.
Countless sessions yield a vast pool of ideas and songs, some of which have already been used on recent albums, others discarded. Experimentation, remixing, expansion, and shortening take place. Antique tape machines, digital effects from the 1980s, and a mixing console from the 1960s are coupled with state-of-the-art computers. Older songs are completely reworked years later, while others are conjured up at the very end. Historical and obscure instruments meet software and samples, and musicians who were still schoolchildren at the beginning of production ultimately participate.
What rightly sounds like chaos and eclecticism has been continually organized by Umberto over the years and, with the help of his co-producer Silvan Strauss, only completed when everything came together harmoniously. On the ten resulting songs on the album, Umberto Echo shares his “Afrodub Experience,” which can be enjoyed for years to come, discovering new details every time.