Ibibio Sound Machine Share New Single, Announced for MRG30

Ibibio Sound Machine is back today with a third taste of their forthcoming new album, Doko Mien--out March 22nd on Merge Records. The sultry "Guess We Found a Way" follows recent tracks "Tell Me (Doko Mien)" and "Wanna Come Down" and is a refreshing change of pace from the more uptempo cuts previously released from Doko Mien, and a further indication of the many moods and influences at play across its 11 tracks.

The band's frontwoman Eno Williams notes, "It's a song about trying to speak to people in words that no-one understands, conveying your feeling with just the music which is what we try to do in many of our songs." It's a modus operandi that fits perfectly with Doko Mien as a whole, a set of songs that preaches openness, communication and inclusivity - qualities to treasure in ever-divisive times.

Listen to & share "Guess We Found a Way"

https://youtu.be/N2Xq_wNn-sc

Doko Mien's first single "Tell Me (Doko Mien)" features disco beats colliding with polyrhythm and pizzicato guitar. Stereogum called it, "an absurdly infectious percussive party track seemingly inspired by the same influences that fueled Talking Heads and LCD Soundsystem" and Afropunk add, "sounds like the lost child of some early-'80s, New York session produced by Lisa Lisa's Cult Jam, or by Gloria Estefan's old Miami crew." On their groovesome, inclusive second single "Wanna Come Down," Brooklyn Vegan add that the song is "another infectious jam from the album that mixes disco, '80s electro with English and Ibibio language lyrics."

Revisit "Tell Me (Doko Mien)" here: https://youtu.be/RbK2dERL_BA

"Music is a universal language, but spoken language can help you think about what makes you emotional, what makes you feel certain feelings, what you want to see in the world," says Williams. When she uses both English and Ibibio - the Nigerian language from which her band's name is derived - onDoko Mien, the group somehow produces a world of both entrancing specificity and comforting universality, a language entirely of their own. In a glowing piece in the New York Times, the songs on the band's 2017 second album, Uyai, were praised for following "in the tradition of much African music, [making] themselves the conscience of a community." By pulsing the mystic shapes of Williams' lines through further inventive, glittering collages of genre on Doko Mien, Ibibio Sound Machine crack apart the horizon separating cultures, between nature and technology, between joy and pain, between tradition and future.

Revisit "Wanna Come Down" here: https://youtu.be/YzrEBE2A2T4

Long lauded for their jubilant, explosive live shows (Entertainment Weeklybest described them, saying, "If the United Nations' General Assembly convened at Studio 54, Ibibio Sound Machine would easily be that night's headlining act"), the group fully captures that energy and communication on the new album. See the group's current tour routing below.

DOKO MIEN TRACK LISTING

1 - I Need You to Be Sweet Like Sugar (Nnge Nte Suka)

2 - Wanna Come Down

3 - Tell Me (Doko Mien)

4 - I Know That You're Thinking About Me

5 - I Will Run

6 - Just Go Forward (Ka I So)

7 - She Work Very Hard

8 - Nyak Mien

9 - Kuka

10 - Guess We Found a Way

11 - Basquiat*

IBIBIO SOUND MACHINE TOUR DATES

Mar 5th | Brighton, UK - Concorde 2

Mar 9th | Bristol, UK - Colston Hall [SOLD OUT]

Mar 13th | London, UK - 100 Club [SOLD OUT]

Mar 14th | London, UK - 100 Club

Mar 15th | Manchester, UK - YES [SOLD OUT]

Mar 16th | Manchester, UK - YES

Mar 18th | Washington, DC - U Street Music Hall

Mar 20th | New York, NY - Brooklyn Bowl

Mar 22nd | Montreal, QC - L'Astral

Mar 23rd | Toronto, ON - Mod Club

Mar 25th | Chicago, IL - Lincoln Hall

Mar 27th | Oakland, CA - New Parish

Mar 28th | Los Angeles, CA - Teragram Ballroom

May 4th | Leeds, UK - Live at Leeds

May 5th | Leicester, UK - Handmade Festival

May 24th | London, UK - All Points East Festival

Jul 12th | Birmingham, UK - Mostly Jazz Festival

Jul 13th | Reading, UK - Readipop Festival

Jul 18th | Cheshire, UK - Bluedot Festival

Jul 27 | Carrboro, NC - MRG30 Festival @ Cat's Cradle

Aug 7th | Newquay, UK - Boardmasters Festival