Discography

2025

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On his new album “The Afrodub Experience,” multi-instrumentalist and producer Umberto Echo takes us on a journey through space and time across four continents, exploring 50 years of Afro-Caribbean music history with numerous collaborators. The starting point and inspiration is the Afrobeat of the 1970s, which Umberto discovered through original musicians from Fela Kuti’s Africa 70 band in the Berlin project “Afrobeat Academy” in the late 2000s, and which he began to fuse with dub and reggae. Originally intended as Umberto’s second album, the project continually takes new twists and turns, becoming a journey you might not want to end.

Eighteen years later, “The Afrodub Experience” is now released as Umberto Echo’s 12th album. Similar to how dub emerged from the roots reggae of the 1970s, Umberto approaches Afrobeat with its many rhythmic layers by isolating and re-melding the musical levels, thus opening up a view of deeper elements in the music. Musicians from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Ghana, and Guinea-Bissau enrich the spectrum, as do singers from Jamaica and Barbados. Jazz musicians and co-producers from New York to Hamburg to Melbourne inspire each other and help give the project a unique character over time.

Countless sessions yield a vast pool of ideas and songs, some of which have already been used on recent albums, while others are discarded. They experiment, remix, extend, and shorten the album. Old tape machines, digital effects from the 1980s, and a mixing console from the 1960s are coupled with state-of-the-art computers. Older songs are completely reworked years later, while others are conjured up at the very end. Historical and obscure instruments meet software and samples, and musicians who were still schoolchildren when production began ultimately participate.

On the resulting ten songs of the album, Umberto Echo shares his “Afrobeat Experience,” which can be enjoyed for years to come, revealing new details with every listen.