By Banning Eyre
Afropop
01-Jun-2002

"A chatterbox weave of cycling guitar riffs and racing drums and percussion tumbles forth. A high lead vocal slices the air with soul-charged precision answered by a looser, more low-key chorus. Right away, you want to dance. This is what highlife is supposed to sound like!..Electric Highlife in a powerful record of a key chapter in the development of modern African pop."

Doctor Rhythm
01-Apr-2002

"Naxos is a German label best known for classical music. They have branched out and are now issuing world music under their Naxos World imprint, and plan a dozen budget-priced new albums this year. I got two new releases to check out: the first, ELECTRIC HIGHLIFE, is a set of classic eighties highlife from Ghana...If you are a fan of classic highlife check this one out...The music reveals the influences of colonial brass ensembles, sea shanties, finger-picked guitar, call-and-response vocals, choppy organs and sweet melodies. Naxos promises thorough documentation with the CD when it is released later this month."

By Jon Pareles
The New York Times
05-Jul-2002

"As earnest voices harmonize, guitars create a giddy tangle in the Ghanaian rock collected on "Electric Highlife: Songs From the Bokoor Studios" (Naxos World). The songs were recorded in the 1980's near Accra by bands little known to the outside world on equipment that was not exactly hi-fi; drums are reduced to a distant patter. But especially in songs by F. Kenya's Guitar Band and the Happy Boys Guitar Band, the guitars make up for it, with staccato picking and quick runs and floating lines hovering like a swarm of tuned mosquitoes in songs so fast it's a wonder people danced to them."