Haiti is clearly hot at the moment, as only weeks after the release of Lakou Mizik's 'Wa DiYo', there's now this self-titled debut of Afro-Haitian Experimental Orchestra. The foundation for this album was laid a few years ago, when Corinne Micaelli, director of the Institut Français in Haiti, decided to invite afrobeat legend Tony Allen to the island. The idea was to have him perform a concert, along with a lot of local musicians, during the Fête de la Musique on the main square in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince. To offer a good cross section of the Haitian music, singer, dancer and voodoo priest Erol Josué recruited musicians from bands like Racine Mapou de Azor, Yizra'El Band, RAM and, of course, Lakou Mizik. Marc Mulholland, who was involved in the project as a guitarist, remembers the rehearsals as pure chaos: "Putting it together was complete chaos. Madness! We were all in this tiny room, playing. We had 10 percussionists from all of Haiti's top bands. Then there was Tony, Olaf Hund on keyboards and Jean-Philippe Dary on bass. He became the de facto musical director. The Sound was OBrien.", but in the end that chaos never the less resulted in a series of songs with roots on both sides of the Atlantic. The original intention was to record the entire concert, but major technical problems prevented that and the whole project threatened to become no more than a fleeting memory. Fortunately there were still the recordings of the rehearsals though. The vocals were re-recorded and when Mulholland presented the result to Glitterbeat boss Chris Eckman in 2014, he immediately showed interest. On the resulting album Mullholland looks back with pride: "I think the album captures the spirit of all of us together in that room. It's anarchic and energetic. And I really believe it's good, it's honest, it's new. It's different. It was an experiment that worked ".