Beat The Border (Bonus Track Version)

This highly creative mix of Ugandan songs and laid-back rock should have been a disaster, since the genres meet on the field of ambient dreams — a woozy terrain amply littered with the rainsticks of fallen warriors. But expat Ugandan Geoffrey Oryema neither tries mainstreaming African sources to fit rock fissures nor piles extra beats and instruments on the heads of reluctant Western forms. Instead, like any good ambient technician, he subjugates every other element to the service of applying textures so palpably rich you wish you could drizzle them over sautéed vegetables. Just to prove it's not all dial twiddling, he kicks in with first-rate songwriting to boot.