Rating: 90/100 - Genre: Afro-Funk, Synth Funk, Reggae.
Goldfinger Doe & B.M.S.’s Let’s Dance Together, first issued in Nigeria in 1979 and resurfaced in a 2017 reissue, presents five tracks that map a concise but detailed arc between party-floor propulsion and meditative groove work. The record’s provenance—original CAP pressing (CAP 007) with a later PMG reissue—frames it as a late-seventies Nigerian artifact that both embraces dance-floor electronics and keeps one foot in live ensemble interplay.
On the opening cut, Jane, the arrangement establishes an economy of material: a steady pulse from drums and bass locks with a repeated keyboard motif while layered guitar lines provide countermelody. The bass—credited to Bashiru Musa—moves in pared, propulsive figures that create forward motion without excessive ornament; the drum work from Mike Umoh sets tonal accents and percussion detail that punctuate phrase endings. Harmonic movement is modest, leaning on modal vamps that allow rhythmic interplay to dictate momentum; melodic fragments on lead voice and guitar unravel over those vamps with a relaxed phrasing that privileges timing and call-and-response.
Funky Africa shifts emphasis toward electronic color and a more insistent beat. Synthesizer lines weave between clavinet-like stabs and sustained pads, while the rhythm section drives a syncopated pattern that favors off-beat accents—an arrangement strategy that nudges the track into disco-informed territory without losing the percussive complexity of West African club idioms. The production places instruments in slightly separated registers: percussion and bass occupy a low register, while keys and higher guitar parts occupy the upper register, giving the mix clarity and room for each element to be audible.
Julie Anna contracts the palette again, introducing a more plaintive vocal approach and string-like keyboard lines that hover above the groove. Where Jane traded on repetitive vamps, Julie Anna allows melodic motion to take center stage: the lead vocal presents short motifs that recur and then resolve against subtly shifting chordal backing. Horn-equivalent keyboard patches occasionally answer the voice, producing a sense of ensemble reply.
The title cut, Let’s Dance Together, is the record’s most explicit dancefloor proposition: it pairs a four-on-the-floor pulse with syncopated percussive fills that lift and suspend sections of the groove. Keyboard hooks are concise and repeated, functioning as structural landmarks that the band returns to between vocal verses. A hand-played feel persists throughout the arrangement—drum fills, congas, and live guitar chords resist mechanical quantization, so the record keeps a human push that contrasts with the programmed feel of late-period disco imports. The combination of steady drive and human microtiming creates a listening experience in which momentum is constant but phrasing breathes.
Jah Help Us closes the LP with a spiritual tint in its lyric phrasing and a looser formal structure. The song opens on a sparser arrangement—space is given to vocal lines and to a rolling percussion bed that includes hand percussion and brushed snare work—then gradually adds harmonic layers. Bass lines here are melodic as well as foundational, stepping out of purely time-keeping roles to create short motifs that the rest of the ensemble mirrors or answers. The track’s thematic closing role on the LP is supported by how the arrangement eases away from the dance momentum of the title cut toward an ending that privileges resonance and rubato.
Production qualities deserve specific mention: across the five tracks the mastering on reissued editions emphasizes midrange clarity, which brings forward vocal and guitar detail while keeping low frequencies controlled. Stereo placement favors a centered low end with percussive elements spread across the field, allowing the listener to separate rhythmic components during repeated listens.
Assessing the musicianship track by track, the record’s compactness is its defining operational choice: musical ideas arrive fully formed and are developed through repetition, subtle variation, and ensemble synchronicity rather than through extended solos or sectional reworkings. The arrangements make repeated use of call-and-response gestures—between lead vocal and instruments, between riff and percussion—so that each song becomes an exercise in small-scale transformation. Personnel listings name Bashiru Musa on bass and Mike Umoh on drums.
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