Whoever gives out music awards should hand one to the German label Analog Africa, which has spent the past decade uncovering lost delights from the continent’s output during the 1960s to 1980s, when few people aside from those who lived there were tuning in to the sounds of West Africa and beyond, Nigeria’s Fela Kuti providing one of the few exceptions. Hot on the heels of Cameroon Garage Funk, this collection – as ever, charmingly presented with in-depth research – focuses on Ghana, whose highlife music was the wellspring for much African output. Its title salutes the Essiebons label of producer Dick Essilfie-Bondzie, who died aged 90 midway through the album’s compilation, but not before unearthing some unreleased gems.

By the mid-70s, highlife’s jazzy roots had become entangled with the sound of Black America to create a funk-heavy hybrid with lots of stuttering guitars, James Brown declamations and meandering organ parts – a genre captured on tracks by scene-shakers such as Ernest Honny and CK Mann, whose Yeaba is a standout. Odder moments feature the proto-synths of the time; Joe Meah’s Ahwene Pa Nkasa typifies an appetite for psych-heavy weirdness. A surprising trip to an altogether other time and place.