TOTO BONA LOKUA

Every once in a while an album just stops you in your tracks. Typically it comes at you from left field, bowling you over with its imaginative artistry and beauty. Such is the case with this unprecedented collaboration between Cameroon's Richard Bona, Congo's Lokua Kanza and Paris-born Gerald Toto, whose parents are Caribbean. This surprising collaboration (which sounds little like their solo work) strips songs down to a bare minimum, with the three singers alternately singing lyrics, melody lines, harmonies, and even staccato rhythms. Conventional guitar, percussion, and other instruments occasionally provide spare backing (such as on Bona's "Kwalelo" and "Ghana Blues"), but the meat of this album is always in those voices. Melding their instruments into soulful but haunting vocal calliopes, the group singing illustrates the entire range of the African Diaspora ­ Toto's "L'endormie" sounds like a cross between atmospheric electro-rockers TV On The Radio and delta blues legend Robert Johnson while his "Help Me" is stripped down soul. Undoubtedly one of the top albums of 2005. ­ --Tad Hendrickson