I’m trying to remember the first time I heard about the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra. I think it was for their collaboration with Medeski Martin and Wood on 2012’s Uninvisible. Now there’s an album that really blew my gaskets.
Antibalas’ 2025 release, Hourglass, doesn’t feel as revolutionary today as Uninvisible did back then. But it’ll still get your ass moving.
From now on, if someone asks me what it means for music to have “texture” I’m going to point them to Hourglass. The horn section on this record sounds like 100-grit sandpaper. It works a bit like it, too, scraping away the crud built up from a long day at work to reveal the vibrance your waking self once had.
The sounds make this record: the electric piano, distorted and drenched in bendy chorus; the bass, round and plump, like a ripe avocado; the drums, funky and fidgety. Listen to that crunch on the kick drum in “Hourglass.” That’s a soul hammer if I ever heard one.
“Antibalas” means bulletproof in Spanish. I see two reasons for why they’re called this. First, a bulletproof guarantee of funky grooves and good times. And second, a bulletproof vest to protect your inner wild from the civilization that’s brutally thrust upon it by society.
Queue up Hourglass and hit play. Get up and dance, my friends. Your sanity might depend on it.
Listen
What is “An Album a Day”?
Each day in 2026, I’m listening to an album that:
- I’ve never heard before
- Was released in the last six months (from the time of listening)