Front cover.

Rejoice is an album by Nigerian drummer, composer and songwriter Tony Allen (1940–2020) and South African trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, singer and composer Hugh Masekela (1939–2018), released in March 2020, shortly before Allen’s death, by World Circuit.

The cover was designed by Florence de la Fournière, with art direction from Neel Panchal. The bouncing letterforms for the title appear to be taken from Press Gothic, featuring a hyper-extended j with customized hook. The artist names are in Bebas Neue.

From World Circuit:

‘Rejoice’ is a very special collaboration between Tony Allen, the legendary drummer and co-founder of Afrobeat, and Hugh Masekela, the master trumpet player of South African jazz.

Having first met in the 70s thanks to their respective close associations with Fela Kuti, the two world-renowned musicians talked for decades about making an album together. When, in 2010, their touring schedules coincided in the UK, the moment presented itself and producer Nick Gold took the opportunity to record their encounter. The unfinished sessions, consisting of all original compositions by the pair, lay in archive until after Masekela passed away in 2018. With renewed resolution, Tony Allen and Nick Gold, with the blessing and participation of Hugh Masekela’s estate, unearthed the original tapes and finished recording the album in summer 2019 at the same London studio where the original sessions had taken place.

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Vinyl record.

CD.

Back cover (vinyl).

Back cover (CD)

Released in 2017, The Source is Tony Allen’s debut full-length album for Blue Note Records, following the 4-track EP A Tribute to Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.

The cover was designed by Rebecca Meek, with photography by Bernard Benant. The fat unicase font is Matrona, a winner in TDC’s 2010 Typeface Design competition. Hubert Jocham describes his design as “a very very very bold headline”. He comments on the background:

When letterpress started with the Gutenberg bible, the typeface was like a texture. Before humanism type did not really need to be legible. The letters were rather drawn in an ornamental way. It filled a space. My idea for Matrona was to create a similar structure. I wanted it to be very bold and still as legible as possible. The result was a headline typeface that can fill almost all the space. You can even fill it with a picture. Or you create an ornament with contents.

Matrona comes in three optical sizes, with slightly less delicate counters and notches for the smaller styles. In some regards, like the hefty weight and the common height of uppercase and lowercase glyphs, it reminds me of Jeremy Tankard’s Shire Types. While Matrona is a biform face, i.e. with two distinct forms at least for some letters, the Shire Types are unicase: The five different yet related members all have a single form for each letter. Matrona maximizes the reduction of the white, without becoming blocky like Fit or Assai.

In memory of Tony Allen who died in Paris on 30 April 2020, aged 79.

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Back cover of the vinyl release. Playfair Display is paired with Geogrotesque.

The back cover of the CD release allows a better look at the typography.

Released in 1975, Jealousy is Tony Allen’s first solo album. The cover design was provided by Remi Olowookere, with photography by Bankole Osunle, and a razzmatazz typography composed from a number of period typefaces. The title is rendered in bichromatic Oxford (1970) which was further jazzed up by a double drop shadow. For Tony Allen’s name, Olowookere chose a face that’s rarely seen in all caps: It’s the swash-laden Lazybones (1972). For some reason, the initial T is the only letter in lowercase. Maybe all cap T’s on the sheet of rubdown letters were already used up? A yellow contour makes sure that the words don’t fall apart.

The typeface used for “Hits With The Africa 70” is the outlier, in terms of design date: Motto goes back all the way to 1915, when it was first issued by ATF. Like Oxford and Lazybones (and Celtic / Forum Flair / University Roman from 1972 which appears on the back cover), it was available from Letraset, too – as Runnymede, which was the name used by British type foundry Stephenson Blake for their version of Motto.

On the Surfing the Odyssey blog, Zen Archer comments:

Drummer Tony Allen has died at age 79. He is widely hailed as one of the founders of Afrobeat alongside his longtime musical partner Fela Kuti, with whom he played for 15 years. […]

This is the first of three of Tony Allen’s solo albums produced by Fela Kuti! Originally released on the private imprint Soundworkshop Records. Arguably one of this best albums with these two killer funky afro-beat gems “Jealousy” and “Hustler”!!!

Aside from playing drums and arranging six of Fela Kuti’s albums in 1975 (!) Tony Allen managed to put out this very short album under his own name. “Jealousy” is pretty similar to Kuti’s work without of course Kuti. Just instrumentation and group vocals. “Hustler” though is the highlight with stabbing horn lines and a great percussion breakdown. Good stuff.

Cover of a re-release by Kindred Spirits with restored album art.

Black Voices is an album by Nigerian drummer, composer and songwriter Tony Allen (b. 1940), released in 1999 by Comet Records in Paris, France. The cover was designed by Inflamable Ink. While the artist’s name is set in an extended version of Richard Schlatter’s high-contrast unicase face Glyphic Series (VGC, 1972) with alternate Y, the title is in lowercase Pasadena Serial, a sci-fi face that originated at the Brendel Type Studio in 1974.

From Wikipedia:

As drummer and musical director of Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s band Africa ’70 from 1968 to 1979, Allen was one of the primary co-founders of the genre of Afrobeat music. Fela once stated that, “without Tony Allen, there would be no Afrobeat.” He has also been described by Brian Eno as “perhaps the greatest drummer who has ever lived.”

[More info on Discogs]

“Last Spring, the track Day Like This was released on Theo Parrish’s new imprint Wildheart Recordings, the fruits of collaboration with legendary Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen, Detroit / Chicago maverick, Theo Parrish and soul vocalists Eska Mtungwazi and Andrew Ashong.
Day Like This has been re-worked by Tony Allen.” — cometrec.fr

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