Tony Allen Film Of Life

Received a 7.2 rating from Pitchfork.

They say:

Best known for defining the pulse of Fela Kuti’s propulsive Afrobeat sound, the self-taught Tony Allen is a near superhuman combination of metronomic sense of time, light touch, economy, endurance, and musicality. Though it took a long time, his distinctive beat is part of the world’s musical vocabulary now. Since parting ways with Fela, he’s done quite a range of work, including a couple of recent, fairly high-profile collaborations with Damon Albarn that took him pretty far away from the pigeonhole people tend to place him in on the basis of his best-known playing.
Film of Life doesn’t quite break new ground for Allen, but it does offer a pretty solid and succinct demonstration of Afrobeat’s adaptability to changing times. There are no side-long epics in the Fela mold here, but Allen packs quite a bit into each of these four-to-seven-minute-tracks, building up from his own drums grooves with hypnotic guitar and bass patterns, a richly arranged horn section, and an assortment of other sounds that are nearly all overwhelmed by the massive rhythm that dominates everything.