'Key To The Universe', 'Axum' and 'Some Dread' form a musical triptych that was created thanks to the collaboration between American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and sound engineer Fikir Amlak, English sound system King Alpha and the American Akashic Records label of Mike B.
Andres Estrada, in dub circles better known as Fikir Amlak (Amhaars for "Love God!"), already started his musical career back in 2002, but disappointed with the music industry he called it a day a few years later and retreated to the mountains of California and Jamaica to devote himself to the study of Rastafari. Occasionally one of his older songs/productions was still released, but it wasn't until 2013 Amlak actually returned to the studio with renewed courage, from that point onwards always pleading in his productions for a balance between the mental, spiritual and physical. In 2014 a close collaboration with Ras Peter and Ras Joseph of London based sound system King Alpha started, and more recently Fikir has also joined Mike B's Atlanta, Georgia based Akashic Records label.
The name of the label refers to the so-called Akashic records, from the Sanskrit "akasha", meaning ether, atmosphere, sky or expansion, a compendium of all human events, thoughts, words, emotions, and intent ever to have occurred in the past, present, or future. They are believed by theosophists to be encoded in a non-physical plane of existence known as the etheric plane. In Hindu mysticism akasha is considered to be the first element of nature, from which the other four, fire, air, water and earth, sprouted. These five elements also represent the five senses of man.
Power of the trinity, so to speak, and in a time span of barely 5 months it yielded this album triptych, with each part released on a date coinciding with a certain astrological event. 'Key To The Universe' stands for "the fullness" of creation, "Axum" for "the healing" and "Some Dread" for "the future". All three albums were recorded in showcase style, with each vocal cut followed by its dub version.
Our personal favorite is 'Axum', for which Fikir Amlak drew inspiration from a series of Amharic sound fragments recorded from Ethiopian radio and television and sent to him by a certain Ras Knowledge. Each fragment was linked to a city or region in Ethiopia and for the album, Amlak has stuck to that pattern, making the album an auditory dub journey through the East African country, stopping off at places like Axum, Gondar, Harar, Addis Ababa and Lalibela.
Mesmerizing, at times hypnotizing, spiritual dub for the current dub generation!