Who is William Onyeabor?

"The nine tracks on this years-in-the-making compilation feature music drenched in analog synths, early drum machine sounds, and wah-wah, phase-shifted guitars and basses. It is all seductive, infectious, and timeless. On set-opener "Body and Soul," Onyeabor co-opts tranced-out, Nigerian juju music, saturates it in slow Afro-funk, and weds it all to P-Funk's call-and-response lyric and chorus; after ten minutes, the effect is consciousness altering ... Who Is William Onyeabor? may not answer many biographical questions, but it does paint a superb portrait of the musician as a highly original creator and pioneer; it adds depth and dimension to the picture we have of African music during the era".

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"He's an Igbo chieftain from Eastern Nigeria who produced eight funky, spacey, handsomely strange synth-disco LPs in the late Seventies and Eighties before embracing Christianity and ditching his career. The catalog gets cherry-picked here for a killer party mix that combines Fela Kuti's extended-groove trance states and soulman call-and-response vocals with old-school drum machines and synths".

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