N.E.P.A. , never expect power always

Tony Allen produced N.E.P.A in 1984 in London. He made it while working with King Sunny Ade, and the JuJu influences are clear in the album. It was an acronym for NIGERIAN ELECTRICAL POWER AUTHORITY, which supplies notoriously erratic power to the city of Lagos and leaves the city at the ,mercy of power cuts. Tony Allen mocked the institution changing it to “NEVER EXPECT POWER ALWAYS”. “The music itself has double power. Allen’s Music replaces the rickety fringes of Afrobeat with a tight mesh of sound that bears some relation to what the young Cameroonians have done with the makossa. Electroclaps provide percussion flavourings: the rest is Allen. The Flipside, “One Door Close, Another Door Open, , is equally hard. Afrobeat is Fela’s creation. But it has taken Tony Allen, and a batch of solo albums recorded with and without Africa 70, to show how hard and direct the style can become” Extract from African All-Stars, Chris Stapleton This album was released only on Vinyl in 1985 and has never been released before on CD A dynamic potpourri of Nigerian highlife jazzes and funk with multi-layered percussion.