I have been for­tu­nate to find some nuggets late­ly this past week. From across the world, I stum­bled upon The Very Best. It is a col­lab­o­ra­tion project between Esau Mwamwaya & Radio­clit (Johan Karl­berg & Eti­enne Tron).

Esau Mwamwaya was born in Mzuzu in Malawi, East Africa. He grew up in the cap­i­tal, Lilong­we, where he played drums with var­i­ous groups, includ­ing the Masa­ka Band. He was a good friend of the leg­endary Evi­son Matafale and they played togeth­er for sev­er­al years before Matafale was killed in Malawi police cus­tody in 2003.

In 1999, Esau moved to Lon­don, Eng­land and has, until recent­ly run a sec­ond-hand fur­ni­ture store in Clap­ton, East Lon­don. Esau’s shop was on the same street as Radio­clit’s old stu­dio, and after the Radio­clit boys bought a bike from Esau, they invit­ed him to one of their house­warm­ing par­ties.

Soon after, Esau and Radio­clit became good friends and they start­ed work­ing on music togeth­er. Two years lat­er, the project has a name, The Very Best.

Oth­er than a self-enti­tled mix­tape this past Octo­ber (down­load link below), their debut/studio album Warm Heart of Africa will be released this Fall. So keep tuned in for that for sure. Lucky for us, they decid­ed to release 2‑tracks for gen­er­al con­sump­tion while we wait for the launch (links below as well).

I had the title track Warm Heart of Africa (fea­tur­ing Ezra Koenig of Vam­pire Week­end) on repeat for most parts of the day—make that “cur­rent­ly” as I just put it back on play! Yah, it’s that good, feel-good music that you just can’t stop lis­ten­ing to, espe­cial­ly on a Fri­day after­noon. I’ll def­i­nite­ly have to add this track to a Sum­mer­time playlist. Any­ways, you don’t take my word for it, lis­ten for your­self… just don’t be sur­prised when you start bob­bing, danc­ing and feel­ing great (how Music should).

With that, go have a lis­ten. Maybe even go check ’em out live! Here are some upcom­ing tour dates:

• July 16, Thurs­day
  The Echoplex
  Los Ange­les, CA
• July 17, Fri­day
  Mighty
  San Fran­cis­co, CA
• July 18, Sat­ur­day
  Le Pois­son Rouge
  New York, NY
• July 19, Sun­day
  Chica­go Pitch­fork Music Fes­ti­val
  Chica­go, IL

Last but not least, here are some free down­loads while they are avail­able:1

• The Very Best Mix­tape (ZIP)
• Warm Heart of Africa feat. Ezra Koenig (of Vam­pire Week­end) (MP3)
• Ntende Uli (MP3)

TGIF! Have a great week­end!

1. Down­load links com­pli­ments of Fair­til­iz­er and Greenowl. [↩]