I reviewed the first album by Ghana’s enigmatic Rob (Reindorf), impressed by the, ahem, militant tightness of his backing band Mag-2 (they were actually culled from a military unit) and Rob’s charmingly off-kilter frontman energy. Recorded in the same year (1977) as its predecessor, Rob’s second album finds his band in a more subdued state, a dark and almost menacing companion to the full-steam-ahead debut.
However, as in their debut, Rob’s band is funky and rock-solid, especially flexing its muscle on slower tracks like “Not The End,” with its unrivaled tightness in horn, drum, and vocal arrangements. Rob sings over the group sections, but also talks a lot, acting in the James Brown ringleader role.
Along with JB, Rob draws influence from many other strands of African music, but no one would accuse Rob of making conventional choices here. He gets worked up on the tight mid-tempo title track, with an array of sexual moans. The Gospelly “I’ve Got To See You Again, Lord,” oddly, may be the funkiest of the bunch. Other religious-tinged tunes like “But You” are slower, more contemplative, more sorrowful. Despite the energy of Rob and the band, it sounds like momentum grinding to a halt here, and in fact, this last recording from Rob wasn’t even released until the current issue by Soundway, which saves our man from undeserved obscurity.
