Tony Allen – “Cosmosis” (Feat. Skepta & Ben Okri)
Last year, the legendary afrobeat drummer Tony Allen passed away. He was working on music right up until the end of his life, and had been prepping a new album. Now, that collection is going to make it out into the world posthumously, on the year anniversary of Allen’s death. It’s called There Is No End, and it’s out at the end of April.
Allen’s impulse behind the album was to work with a younger generation of artists, particularly rappers. He completed his part of the recording, and some of the rest had to be completed after he passed. There’s some pretty intriguing collaborations here, including with Sampha The Great and Danny Brown. We get to hear one of them today, “Cosmosis,” a co-write with Damon Albarn that also features Skepta and Nigerian novelist/poet Ben Okri. (Skepta previously crossed paths with longtime collaborators Albarn and Allen on the Gorillaz track “How Far?” last May.)
“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,” Okri said of working with Allen. “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.”
Check it out below.
01 “Tony’s Praeludium”
02 “Stumbling Down” (Featuring Sampha The Great)
03 “Crushed Grapes” (Featuring Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon)
04 “Très magnifique” (Featuring Tsunami)
05 “Mau Mau” (Featuring Nah Eeto)
06 “Coonta Kinte” (Featuring Zelooperz)
07 “Rich Black” (Featuring Koreatown Oddity)
08 “One Inna Million” (Featuring Lava La Rue)
09 “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”
There Is No End is out 4/30 via Decca France.