A smidgen of geographical context for you then. The Trans Mara District was a former, standalone region in the former Rift Valley province of Kenya before merging with the neighbouring Narok county in 2010. Its a place that Charif Megarbane - an über-talented Lebanese multi-instrumentalist - really bonded with. So much so that Trans-Mara Express has become one of his many monikers for dipping into the cultured pot that is East Africa.

Not an iota of 'express' or disposability seeps into 2, which was produced in Nairobi and tallies up as his 60th project to date. Instead, ounces of Somali funk, J Dilla off-kilter hip-hop and mbira are masterfully ladled into its every nook. Charif also adds fresh meaning to the term one man band, composing and mixing the album with a myriad of instruments being plucked, scratched and tapped: 6 string electric guitar, electric bass, double bass, MPC and nyatiti all become his play things at some point during the 21-tracker.

"Every Frame A Painting" is blissful, summer-coated stuff; kickstarted by contagiously foot-shifting melody before tobogganing into languid, reverb-drenched lounge territory. It's instrumental hip-hop with all the tasteful snippets of the equatorial region.

It's out via Hot Record Société digitally and 50 copies on cassette.

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Transmara Express "Every Frame A Painting" - Boiler Room Debuts

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