'Pirates Choice' was recorded in two-track studios in one take - no overdubs, no second thoughts - and done with such ease and effortlessness that it has become truly a slice of history. First released on World Circuit in 1989, the album captured the legendary Senegalese group Orchestra Baobab in one of their last studio sessions in 1982. The album is an undiluted, soulful and mellow session where the musicians laid down rhythmic grooves over favourite Baobab songs, revealing the huge influence Cuban music had on them. This re-release is remastered, repackaged and augmented with a second CD of 6 previously-unissued bonus tracks. Personnel: Issa Cissako - (tenor saxophone), Barthelemy Attisso - (lead guitar), Papa Ba - (rhythm guitar), Adama Sarr - (guitar), Charlie Antoine N'Biay - (bass), Balla Sidibe - (vocals, timbales), Radolphe Gomis, Nbjanga Dieng, Medoune Diall, Mapenda Seck - (vocals), Mountaga Kouyate - (percussion, tumba) The original Pirates Choice vinyl album makes up disc one of this two-CD set of the same name. It was originally released in France, then reissued by World Circuit in 1989. These tracks were initially available on cassette in Senegal, and the arguably superior disc two unearths the copious remainder of those sessions. Named after the Dakar club where they became resident, Baobab first formed in 1970. This remastered set marks the band's reunion after well over a decade apart. Here, their mood is one of reclining, with a potent Cuban rumba influence providing a languorous swaying motion, each track taking its time to unwind. These numbers represent the Orchestra at its most laid-back, especially when compared to their more abrasive works (1981's Sibou Odia, for instance). Baobab could boast a pool of five singers, their lyrics moving from Wolof to Spanish, backed up by an array of percussion and guitars. Issa Cissoko's creamy tenor saxophone and Barthelemy Atisso's floaty guitar were crucial to the band's sound, providing articulate solo voices that curve and curl around the chorus lines. --Martin Longley Review Orchestra Baobab were up there with Guinea's Bembeya Jazz as one of the great Dakar-based bands of the late 1970s and early 1980s, a time when Latin/ Cuban music was so well integrated with local styles that the end-product was more alluring than anything out of Cuba itself. Originally formed as the house band of Dakar's Baobab Club, founder members Barthelemy Atisso and singers Balla Sidibe and Rudy Gomis came from the Star Band, and the line-up eventually included Wolof, Malinke, Toucouleur, Nigerian and Moroccan musicians, and singer Thione Seck. Their sophisticated arrangements fused elements of many local traditional forms with Latin music and jazz. Barthelemy Atisso's guitar style, whilst not as frantic as that of Bembeya's "Diamond Fingers", was extremely original (a muted sound somewhere between the Congo and surf guitar) and this coupled with Issa Cissoko's tenor sax was the hallmark of their great works like the sultry "Utru Horas". World Circuit issued Pirates Choice (so named because they were one of the most tape bootlegged bands in West African history) in the 80s, but this has now grown into a double CD--the second one composed of six more tracks from the same session that are just as good as most of those previously released. Plenty of variety among them too, including the very Wolof, tenor-led "Foire Internationale" sung by Ndiouga Dieng to a big grinding local rhythm, the very Latin "La Rebellion", and closing with "Balla Daffe" which is Baobab-do-reggae and nicely too. Like half the new tracks, the latter is sung by Balla Sidibe. And now, after their sensational re-formation in 2001, we can look forward to the next chapter too. Ian Anderson � fRoots Magazine all rights reserved -- fRoots, October 2001 The liquid sound of the West African night courtesy of the seminal Senegalese band. -- The Observer Music Monthly, 50 Essential CDs from Around the World, June 2008