https://youtu.be/vUHrt9fDI4E
https://youtu.be/tXoAGmzrwp4
https://youtu.be/YHAgazhLIWM

People have been living around the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro for millennia. One day in 2014 another jeep pulled up, in a rural neighbourhood where many people from the Wachaga nation live, work and play. This jeep contained Ophir ‘Kutiman’ Kutiel, the producer, multi-instrumentalist and filmmaker who is get-stopped-in-the-supermarket famous in his home country despite being terminally shy of the spotlight.

Kutiman carried microphones, video recording equipment and a request for creative collaboration to Tanzania – and he left Wachaga with a set of recordings. Some of these were of everyday sounds and some contained special sounds: school children from the city of Arusha playing drums or the dancers who wore bells to add a percussive element to the movement, like the metal plate in a tap dancer’s shoe.

This fourth studio album is a combination of the material he collected on his 2014 trip with recordings made with saxophonist Shlomi Alon, trumpeter Sefi Zisling and trombonist Yair Slutzki, alongside his own playing and studio wizardry. He was listening to a lot of spiritual jazz during the recording, and in a departure from his usual cut and paste style, played on top of the recordings.

It’s a creative push that has paid off: Horns and synth melodies spiral across borrowed rhythm patterns and chants which provide the bedrock around which Kutiman builds his own musical dwelling, creating new pathways of jazz, psychedelia and circular meditative zone-outs.
credits
released July 17, 2020

Music, photos, artwork and videos by Ophir "Kutiman" Kutiel
Mastering by Brian Lucey @ Magic Garden Mastering
Production Manager Recording: May Hershkovitz Reshef
Special Thanks to Hatari lodge Marlies Gabriel, Tanzania Tourist Board and Safari Company
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