Michael Olatuja - Lagos Pepper Soup

2020 CD release.

"Lagos Pepper Soup is an ambitious work of African diasporic jazz. Olatuja’s bass playing throughout the album is vibrant and endlessly creative... A bold and colorful release that comfortably holds space for a rich musical exchange between American jazz and the music of the African continent."
Bandcamp (Album of the Day)

" A thorough command of hard-hitting afrobeat; jazz and funk enables Olatuja to make appealing music that draws a coherent line from the rhythmically and metrically complex to ballads with a soulful and folkish beauty."
★★★★ Jazzwise Magazine (Editors Choice​)
 
​"Michael Olatuja's most complete and compelling album to date."
Canción a quemarropa

"Bassist Michael Olatuja opens "Lagos Pepper Soup", the title track of his upcoming album, with a flurry of plucked, playful notes, scattered over the track's polyrhythmic backbone. It isn't long before they settle into an upbeat melody, bright and driving: a celebration of life, culture, family, and the many things still worth staying positive about."
Pop Matters

"A sonic experience of epic proportions."
WBGO

"Lagos Pepper Soup contains many brilliant musical renderings performed by a great supporting cast of internationally renowned artists."
Black Grooves

"This recording aurally illustrates the places and spaces Michael Olatuja has been, and it forecasts the shape of his Afrocentric jazz to come. The tapestries he weaves are beautiful, complex, and inspiring, demanding repeat listens."
Glide Magazine

"The entire project comes off like an intricate sequence of events celebrating life, love, joy and hope – it’s the type of vision that forever emphasises the importance of a fully-realised album."
★★★★★ UK Vibe