Kokoroko

Could We Be More (BWOOD228CD)

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Title Could We Be More

Author Kokoroko

Label Brownswood

EAN 5060180325336

Reference GEN 169284

LABEL CODE BWOOD228CD

STYLE JAZZ

DISCS NUMBER 1

• DIGIPACK EDITION

This is the phenomenal, London based 8-piece band Kokoroko’s long-awaited debut album Could We Be More via Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings.

Could We Be More is an expansive and ambitious album that speaks to the force of Kokoroko. Each song possesses the energy which so naturally underpins the heartbeat of Kokoroko’s identity, deftly moving through afrobeat, highlife, soul, and funk across the album’s 15 tracks and taking inspiration from a plethora of other influences from within the West-African and Caribbean communities that the band grew up listening to, the album gifts the listener feelings of homecoming and joy.

Speaking on the origins of Could We Be More, band members Sheila Maurice-Grey and Onome Edgeworth explain: “I think home has hugely informed the way we write and play our music. Everyone comes from different backgrounds but the thing that unites us in Kokoroko is that we all have a similar love and appreciation for afrobeat and highlife, whether that’s Ebo Taylor or Pat Thomas,” Sheila says. “It’s that feeling when you’re younger and you hear something and you feel some ownership over it. For me, Nigerian music and soul was played in the house a lot so I felt I had ownership over it so when I heard it elsewhere, there was a certain pride and energy filled with it. Recreating a piece of music that fills you with pride, ‘this is a piece of me and this is what I came from,’” Onome adds.

Kokoroko has come to represent all that is blissfully sweet about London’s improvised music scene - an echo of the past that has taken on new forms while still sounding new and entirely original.