Doctor L ft Tony Allen – By Surprise // Song Of The Day #377

This is a bit of a dream team. Tony Allen remains one of the world’s best-loved drummers, having played such a pivotal role in the West’s discovery of highlife through his work with Fela Kuti. Doctor L, meanwhile, is a French-Irish hip-hop and trip-hop producer with about a dozen albums to his name.

Together they’ve pieced together this opiate-like track that sits somewhere in the intersection of a Venn diagram taking in dub, afrobeat, and West Coast hip-hop. It’s eminently danceable and actually quite disturbing, with disembodied voices faintly audible in your headphones at unexpected moments.

‘By Surprise’ is taken from Doctor L’s forthcoming album The Great Depression, due out in February.