Konono N°1 - 'Congotronics' (Ache)

Somehow this feels like a long time ago already; it has been 13 years, I guess, but this time has passed somehow both slowly and quickly at the same time. Which is maybe a cheap metaphor for describing the music of Konono?Congotronics arrived at the right time for me. Perhaps it had felt like I and my friends had exhausted our investigations of caucasian music as far as they could go, a feeling which was absolutely not true but certainly how I felt at the time. Perhaps the sheer awesomeness of this music, equal parts novelty, energy and magic, was undeniable. And why not? The newsprint poster included here explicitly maps out the connection between this recording and 'today's most underground forms of music', no doubt referring to their use of homemade electronic amplifiers. I guess that's something, though I've been to basement noise gigs in Ohio built around similar homemade amplifiers and it felt nothing like Congotronics. This isn't a blown out, distorted sound but one that is bathed in a warm fuzz. The bass likeme is the star of the show and the reason I like to listen to this on vinyl; its tones are soothing despite having a thump and kick. The percussion, well, it's all percussion I guess, but the non-likembe percussion, being pots, pans and tam-tam, feel more like a light dressing on top. The pulse here is not so much hypnotic as scatterbrained; there's an off-kilter balance throughout, constructed by the rising and interacting waves of likembes. The slow numbers, 'Kule Kule' and its reprise, are my favourites, as they have the same ability to pull my head and my heart together as I first felt when hearing Steve Reich and Philip Glass. The longer pieces, well, they're just a party that never seems to stop. I'm no expert on African music but have my fair share of Ocora releases and it's easy to make a superficial connection between the structures of those recordings and these. Horizontality is the game here, but that could just as easily work as a comparison to, well, 'today's most underground forms of music' circa 2005 (so, really, yesterday's). It's logical that this hit when it did; the predominantly white sounds of my life were struggling to accommodate more disparate influences, and I remember a lot of local rock/post-punk bands employing 'African' material, not to mention stuff like Vampire Weekend. Hey, it happened before in the early 80s too; white is always going to look to black for inspiration and I'm not one to get hung up on authenticity. But this still transports me to never-actually-experienced smoggy night in Kinshasa; it's this type of audiotourism that justifies owning so many goddamned records.