Awesome Tapes from Africa was launched in 2006 by Brian Shimkovitz, an ethnomusicologist from New York. It started out as a blog to document his precious archive of cassettes from the African continent: from Zimbabwe to Ethiopia via Senegal. Everything was meticulously digitalised and preserved online. Today, ATFA is a label that licenses the rerelease of historic music that has never been seen on the western market. ATFA is not alone, it came in the wake of – or perhaps anticipated? – a western-centric interest in certain golden ages of African music, yet it does so with a genuine approach that neither brags nor sugarcoats. And that is important these days. Oh, and then there’s the fact that his sets (strictly cassettes) can last for hours and reach peaks of pure ecstasy. Don’t miss it!