Having been a bit busy in the last few weeks, with sporadic internet connection for much of that period, I really feel a bit out of touch with what is going on in the world. I passed a newspaper billboard on the way home yesterday which said “Almunia: we don’t fear the Turks” and my mind began to spin. What was this Turkey-Spain conflagration which I hadn’t heard about? Had Turkey developed the bomb? Were they planning on using it to settle some score they had forgotten about for the best part of five hundred years? Sadly, the truth turned out to be more mundane: Almunia turns out not to be the PM of Spain, but in fact plays in goal for some local football team or other. Ho-hum. Some things appear to have stayed the same over this period though. For example, that American election seems still to be NOWHERE NEAR happening as far as I can tell, and Thrill Jockey continue to release beguilingly quirky rock records. Some of which don’t even feature any members of Tortoise.

Given the list of instruments on this, you may well diagnose this as world-curious: “electric kalimba, bobo balaphone, Burmese temple gongs, agogo bells, anandolohori, cuica, timbale, conga, bongos, vibraslap, various shakers, bells, chimes, claps, and melodica”. In fact it sounds like most of this features on the Konono No.1 down-the-disco instrumental “Creation Stepper”. It doesn’t always work, particularly when the Nicoesque vocalist Fay Davis-Jeffers is elbowed aside in order to let the squeaky-voiced fella sing. But when it does all come together it more than makes up for it, as on the opening one-two: the slinky fizz of “Evacuation days” and the brassy shuffle of “Omen“. I’ll even forgive “My Darkers” sly quotation of a melody or two from Tom Waits’s Rain Dogs.

As a reminder – if one was needed, and in my case it seems it was – that pan-global comings together can be constructive as well as destructive, this will do the job. File next to the summery pop thrills of High Places. If you file things in record label order. Which surely you don’t. Do you? Lunatic.