ROSTER ADDITION

Please welcome Anthony Joseph! Anthony Joseph is an award-winning British-Trinidadian poet, novelist, academic, and musician. Described as "the leader of Black avant-garde literature in Britain," his work seamlessly blends spoken-word poetry with a rich tapestry of spiritual jazz, funk, Afro-Caribbean rhythms, and dub.

Over a career spanning more than two decades, Joseph has released ten critically acclaimed studio albums—including The Rich Are Only Defeated Because They Are Incapable of Fear (which won the prestigious Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award) and his 2026 release The Ark.

Known for his deep, resonant voice and powerful lyricism, he uses Afrofuturism to explore Caribbean identity, history, and alternative futures. As a literary figure, his poetry and fiction have been shortlisted for major UK awards, solidifying his status as a vital voice in contemporary Black British culture.

Time To Get On Board A New Black Universal Express

With each new recording Anthony Joseph presents an imaginative, personal

vision of contemporary black culture, and The Ark is yet another compelling

album by the award-winning Trinidadian poet and musician. This second part of

a sequence of two albums launched with last year’s Rowing Up River To Get Our

Names Back, finds Joseph giving full vent to his desire to explore many

thought-provoking themes. However, there is a specific thread running through

the glorious offering of sounds.

”I was especially interested in the idea of using Afrofuturism as a means of

using the future in order to correct the wrongs of the past,

” explains Joseph.

“And so a lot of lyrics reimage or imagine an alternate black history. At the same

time there are elements of autobiography.

” The aforesaid cultural

phenomenon, a view of the black experience through the prism of science

fiction and ancient Egypt and Africa, as mapped out by visionaries from music

and literature such as Sun Ra, Parliament-Funkadelic and Octavia E. Butler, has

previously inspired Joseph. His 2006 novel The African Origins Of UFOs was a

multi-hued work, and the new music shows how Josephhas, much like all significant artists, gone on to broaden his conceptual palette,

creating beguiling new stories and images set to startling rhythms and tones.

Tracks such as ‘James’

, with its taut, crisp bass and dubbed-up brass, and

‘Transposition Of Space (Glissant)’

, a potent evocation of the influential

Martiniquan theorist set in a haze of jazz guitar and ambient synthesizers, are

marvels of text-sound painting.

As for ‘Baron Samedi’

, shaped by a languid, almost wounded guitar line and

slow rise of horns that frame Joseph’s journey to the ‘mountain of fire, almost

touching the sky’ it is an epic blend of commanding vocal delivery and dramatic

sonic tapestry.

Joseph led the Spasm band in the early 2000s and recorded well-received

albums such as Bird Head Son and Time, in which songs were largely based on

spirituals or chants enhanced by improvisation. But his musical curiosity has

naturally led to collaborations, and the new work is produced by Dave Okumu,

the prodigiously talented guitarist-vocalist-composer known as the leader of

Mercury Music Prize-nominated The Invisible, and who was also a member of

the seminal band Jade Fox.

Having first performed together at a show curated by influential

saxophonist-flautist Shabaka Hutchings at the storied Total Refreshment Centre

In London during lockdown, Joseph and Okumu struck up a rapport that further

developed when the former guested on he latter’s album. With the connection

made Joseph knew Okumu was the ideal producer for this latest project, which

has a freewheeling, almost black psychedelic thing. After sifting through demos

and loops the guitarist made on pro-tools the poet started to live with the

music. Many months later words began to take shape. Joseph then went into

the studio with Okumu’s band and set about creating a magnum opus. Boasting

a stellar cast such as vocalist Eska Mtungwazi, trumpeter Byron Wallen and

keyboardist Nick Ramm, The Ark is a highly intricate musical mosaic framed by

simmering funk grooves, wily jazz improvisation and haunting dub effects.

Through the use of many genres the music has simply become its own genre.

The Ark can be perceived as a vessel or means of transport to new worlds,

along the lines of Sun Ra’s Ark or Funkadelic’s Mothership, and the material it

contains is a unique blend of who Anthony Joseph is and how he sees the world

and society in these stimulating, challenging times.

“It balances the personal

with the universal in a much more vulnerable, accessible way than on previous

albums,

” Joseph explains.“It has become less about a personal experience and more about a collective,

communal experience in which the artist is conduit, messenger, urban griot.

”

Tracklist

1 / A1 - James 7.13

2 / A2 - Blue Susan 4.55

3 / B1 - Transposition of Space (Glissant) 7.56

4 / B2 - The African Origins of UFOs 5.12

5 / C1 - The Ark 8.47

6 / C2 - Your bird & I 4.19

7 / D1 - Baron Samedi 11.16

Anthony Joseph voix

Produced by Dave Okumu (guitare, electroniques, basse)

Engineered by Nick Powell and Dave Okumu

Mixed by Dan Parry

Mastered by Shawn Joseph

Artwork by Rai Wong - Bunny

Design by Jean Louis Duralek

Tom Skinner (batterie) Eska Mtungwazi (voix) Colin Webster (sax) Nick Ramm (keys) Aviram

Barath (keys) Byron Wallen (trompet) James Wade Sired (trombone) Dan See (batterie)

Richard Spaven (batterie) Giacomo Smith