{"title":"Kokoroko","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eKokoroko formed in 2014 when Sheila Maurice-Grey and Onome Edgeworth met on an arts trip to Kenya and came home to London with a shared idea: to connect young people in the African diaspora with the Afrobeat and highlife traditions that Fela Kuti, Tony Allen and Ebo Taylor had built. Their breakthrough came when Gilles Peterson put \"Abusey Junction,\" a seven-minute guitar-rooted ballad, as the closing track on the \"We Out Here\" Brownswood compilation in 2018, and it accumulated tens of millions of streams within weeks of the video going online. The self-titled EP that followed confirmed the range. Their debut full-length \"Could We Be More\" (Brownswood, 2022) expanded the palette toward funk, gospel and Caribbean sounds while keeping the West African highlife rhythm structures at the centre. \"Tuff Times Never Last\" (Brownswood, 2025), produced by Miles Clinton James, moved further toward neo-soul, 1980s British R\u0026amp;B and lovers rock, featuring guest vocalists including Azekel and Demae, and earned the band comparisons to Donald Byrd's mid-1970s Blue Note recordings for the lightness of its jazz-funk touch. They are based in London and remain active.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"kokoroko-could-we-be-more-2022-uk-brownswood-black-vinyl-lp","title":"Kokoroko - Could We Be More (2022 UK Brownswood Black Vinyl LP)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eKokoroko - \u003cem\u003eCould We Be More\u003c\/em\u003e | Vinyl LP - 2022 UK Brownswood Recordings (BWOOD0228LP, black vinyl)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKokoroko formed in London in 2014, an eight-piece led by trumpeter Sheila Maurice-Grey and built around a shared love of Nigerian Afrobeat and Ghanaian highlife. Their name is an Urhobo word for \"be strong\". They spent years building a reputation on the live circuit, and then \"Abusey Junction\", a slow-burning track from Gilles Peterson's \u003cem\u003eWe Out Here\u003c\/em\u003e compilation, went quietly viral and pulled in tens of millions of plays. \u003cem\u003eCould We Be More\u003c\/em\u003e is the debut that followed, eight years after the band first got together. It runs the group's influences together without seams: Fela Kuti and Ebo Taylor grooves, the bright ripple of highlife guitar, soul, funk and a psychedelic streak in Yohan Kebede's keys, with the horn front line of Maurice-Grey, Cassie Kinoshi and Richie Seivwright out ahead. \"Tojo\" opens to a fanfare, \"We Give Thanks\" rides a highlife lick, and \"Those Good Times\" slips into neo-soul with a Maurice-Grey vocal.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt landed as one of the signal records of the London jazz scene that had been building through the late 2010s, the same broad movement as Ezra Collective, Nubya Garcia and Sons of Kemet. This is the 2022 UK pressing on Brownswood, catalogue BWOOD0228LP, a single black vinyl LP mastered at Metropolis with a printed inner sleeve.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Brownswood","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44038383468603,"sku":null,"price":85.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0630\/3203\/3339\/files\/a1461574303_10_78c62c71-670e-4f1d-8c5d-2d6c2dea3274.jpg?v=1787613716"}],"url":"https:\/\/lushliferecords.com.au\/collections\/kokoroko.oembed","provider":"Lush Life Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}