Mahjongg

It's 2008, and hippie jam-bands aren't what they used to be. Chicago-based art-punk collective Mahjongg is a new-gen jam-machine, a lot more interested in samplers and West Africa-derived trances than in blues-infected a-rhythmia -- though both do bathe in the same smoky haze. On Mahjongg's debut for K Records, the thumb-pianos and juju guitars echo the organic dance-music of Konono No. 1 and King Sunny Ade, even as its lo-fi vocals and beats map the coordinates to a North American urban loft-space near indie-ville. Call it "My Life in the Hard-drive of Ghosts."