The Singles Jukebox

Let’s begin the week with a new addition to the sidebar…

[Video][Website]
[8.38]

Will Adams: A familiar story (love conquering materialism) set against a breathtaking backdrop: feathery house that yearns and yearns until what began as just a winding vocal bass and handclaps blooms into a glorious release, complete with organ solo. The best dancing is done while crying anyway.
[10]

Scott Mildenhall: South Africa may currently be in the middle of spring, but “Akanamali” has all the melancholy of early autumn. Dead leaves and dimming nights, walking home under electric lights, and in tune with the lyrics, absorbing the romance. This isn’t some untainted summer scene — though that is glimpsed in the distance — instead it’s an ideal of love over hardship, and all the more evocative for it. As unabashed as to be invincible, Samthing Soweto sounds like a man validated by love, and whatever the limitations or potential problems of that, it’s intoxicating, long before the creaky organ — autumnal instrument nonpareil — finishes with a flourish.
[9]

Jonathan Bradley: Sun-EL Musician and Samthing Soweto imbue the burbling grooves of “Akanamali” with smooth sophistication, but never enough to dislodge the grit shaking around the murkier corners of this mix. It keeps immediate and intimate a song that opens wide enough to encompass the heavens: the organ peals that break through the closing bars are sweat and city streets in a track that reaches to the firmament.
[7]

Julian Axelrod: I’m amazed by how human this feels. Every element is part of a cohesive whole, but they feel more like voices in a crowd than parts of a machine. Instead of knocking you upside the head with a drop, it billows and unfolds around you until you’re lost in its world. Suddenly, hearing a stray Hammond organ feels like discovering a new color. It sounds like the best party you’ve never been to, with Soweto’s beautiful hums and cries conversing alongside the whispering synths and stuttering steel drums. Everything feels organic and makes perfect sense, even if you don’t speak the language. I just want to live in this song, even if it’s just for a few minutes.
[10]

Ashley John: The supreme power of dance music is that it takes over both the physical and the mental. When it’s good like this we lose control of all capacities. This song makes me feel like being shot into the moon and like ice running through my veins. My eyes shut involuntarily and scatter back and forth trying to follow the beat. “Akanamali” sounds like a Möbius strip as it reworks itself, generating over, up, and around. I’m obsessed with listening to the corners of it, a problem to solve if I’m able to keep my focus off dancing for long enough. 
[9]

Edward Okulicz: The last thing I want to listen to in summer is dance music. This track, though, nicely skips the problems of 2017’s chart kings not by feeling light and party-ready, but by giving some grunt and propelling itself forward with bass, not just beat, and hiving off surprises like an organ solo. It’s an emotionally rich vocal from Samthing Soweto, too.
[7]

Iain Mew: Sometimes taking a breather to a song that creates its own time is a great thing, and the bass pulse is the perfect reassuring constant through the shifting patterns they create.
[7]

Alfred Soto: From the intro grunt to the keyboard hook playing quiet variants on an elementary riff, “Akanamali” is idea for Sunday morning listening — a secular temple constructed of a half dozen essential bits. Artists still attracted to trop house may find lots to sample here.
[8]