On a recent trip to Ethiopia I picked up a few old 45rpm records from the 1960s. They are super fun to listen to, though some of them are in really bad shape. I digitised the records and used some de-noising plugins with some good results, but one record by Tewolde Redda record has so far eluded my attempts at cleaning the sound. However when I pushed the de-noising plugins to their maximum settings they created a wonderfully abstract representation of the original music.

Have a listen to the result:

I love how you can still hear a lot of the rhythmic and melodic structures, but how they have been transformed into something that sounds almost like 1960s style spectral synthesis. It’s oddly fitting.

I’m currently working, among other things, on the recordings I made in Ethiopia. Some of those should be ready for release soon. In the mean time, if you’re interested in vintage Ethiopian music you can check out Kidus Berhanu’s Soundcloud page for some great mixes. He’s the one who sold me these records, and his collection and knowledge is fantastic.

Record shopping in Addis Ababa.

A video posted by Yann Seznec (@amazingrolo) on Dec 17, 2014 at 3:37am PST