Welcome to a rare slice of TGU history. Back in the days when we were on Nation Records, Hamid Mantu teamed up with Jo Cohen of the Bollywood Band with the original aim of creating a London jazz-Afrobeat project featuring South African vocalist Doreen Thobekile, at that point very much in the public eye after working with the KLF. The rest is history in that Doreen became TGU's lead singer and is still deeply missed after her death in 2010.
But Xangbetos enlarged as a project, bringing in Neil Sparkes and Mick Bevan (of west London band the Decorators, who Joe had also been in) adding English lyrics to Doreens Zulu texts, along with a whole bunch of local collaborators and members of the TGU/Nation family. An EP was released in 1997 with remixes from Nelson Dilation and Yam Yam, the band played WOMAD to a great reaction, but the whole album was never released for various reasons, mainly due to TGU and the Bollywoods being much too busy in their own rights. But a lot of great music was recorded and it deserves to be heard. In fact we reckon it's matured like a fine wine. So in 2021 we proudly present the too long awaited release of 'Notions Lotions and Potions' along with a whole 2nd album of dubs and alternative mixes. Back to 1997 with a brass driven bang!