Various Artists - Essiebons Special 1973 - 1984 / Ghana Music Power House [CD]

After opening West Africa’s first record pressing plant in 1967, Essilfie-Bondzie’s Dix and Essiebons labels were synonymous - for most of the 1970s - with the best in modern highlife, and his roster was a who’s-who of highlife legends. C.K. Mann, Gyedu Blay Ambolley, Kofi Papa Yankson, Ernest Honny, Rob ‘Roy’ Raindorf and Ebo Taylor all released some of their greatest music under the Essiebons banner.

Essiebons Special features a selection of obscure workouts from some of the label’s heaviest hitters. But in the course of digitising his vast archive of master tapes, Essilfie-Bondzie found a number of Afrobeat and Inst- rumental masterpieces tracks from the label’s mid-70s golden age that, for one reason or another, had never been released. Those songs are included here for the first time.

Sadly Essilfie-Bondzie passed away shortly before the compilation was finished. But his legacy lives on in the extraordinary music that he gave to the world in his lifetime.