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“Fierce, uncompromising music” — The Wire

“Work Hard” solidifies King Ayisoba’s reputation as both a shamanic performer and a restless sonic experimenter.

The album is a wild mashup of Ayisoba’s frenetic kologo sound and musical deep dives from an exciting roster of Ghanaian producers and contributors. Curated and partially mixed by Zea, from post-punk legends The Ex.

How does modern pop music reflect its surroundings? Given so many artists often find themselves in in-between states, decamped in airport lounges on their way to somewhere else, the idea of one record successfully capturing the magic of two places separated by thousands of miles, may sound like a contradiction in terms. But this is what happened with Work Hard, the new album from King Ayisoba.

Work Hard has a different focus than Ayisoba’s previous releases. This was partly due to the disruptions and adjustments that Covid brought in its wake, which in turn necessitated a more homegrown strategy. The bulk of the recording and mixing was done at Top Link, Francis Ayamga’s hilltop studio in Bongo, a town in the Upper East Region of Ghana bordering Burkina Faso. Francis has become an in-demand producer, due mainly to his previous work with Ayisoba, a relationship that also packed in a European tour as part of the King’s band, playing the djembe and bembe drums. Francis has thrown himself into curating as much of the local music scene as possible, producing This is FraFra Power (2019), released on Makkum Records, the label of key Ayisoba collaborator and main international “presence” on Work Hard, Zea, aka Arnold de Boer. De Boer, who mixed two tracks and did the mastering (as well as adding vocals and guitar parts), talked of how some of the “Glocal” sounds on King Ayisoba’s new record initially came to pass. The record’s core playfulness, brilliantly .......
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