Sure-As-Not

When I first graduated college, I worked for a music store for about 6 months -- Hear Music, long before Starbucks bought them and rewrote their history, but that's a tale for another day. There were many awesome things about Hear Music -- the fact that you could listen to anything in the store prior to buying it; the cool, independent, music-loving employees the store attracted; and the wide array of folk, rock, world, classical, alternative, you name it (so long as it isn't pop) music available for your listening pleasure. Sure-As-Not, and explicitly the Jungle Segue, by the Afro Celt Sound System, was one of the early loves that I got introduced to while I worked there, and an example of why working in a music store and actually trying to earn a living do not always go hand-in-hand seeing as how I bought the album pretty much as soon as I heard it.

The Afro Celt Sound System is really a lot like it sounds. Their first album, my personal favorite, was "the first fruit of a collaboration between a group of the finest African musicians, their counterparts from the Celtic communities of western Europe and several of Britain's most respected dance music producers," according to their website. It's a glorious noise, almost infectious, that gets inside of you and makes you want to move. It makes you wonder why the whole world isn't begging for an African-Celtic fusion in music, because it was obviously meant to be.

If you have a chance to pick up some Afro Celt Sound System, please do. You won't regret it. I promise.

Artist: Afro Celt Sound System
Song: Sure-As-Not
Part A: Sure-As-Not, Part B: Sure-As-Knot (Jungle Segue)
Album: Sound Magic
Website: http://realworldrecords.com/afrocelts/
Fan Site: http://www.afrocelts.org/