Album Reviews

UIQ

Producer, DJ and sonic activist Nkisi releases her highly ambitious and experimental debut album, 7 Directions, on Lee Gamble’s UIQ imprint. The Congolese-born, London-based artist – founder of the NON WORLDWIDE collective, who focus on uncompromised music from across Africa and the diaspora – unleashes a highly compelling and addictive debut here. Based on the cosmology of the Bantu-Kongo, a Central African ethnic group, with particular reference to the scholar Dr Kimbwandende Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau, the record explores the fascinating polyrhythms of Congolese percussion music via seven hyper-modern, electronic tracks. The result is a frenetic patchwork of bristling rhythms that combine with drone, compressed textures, whirring synths, stretched-out pads, reverb and a dark undercurrent of bass to create a soundscape that is modern and club-focused, but with obvious links to tradition and spirituality. The long, meandering tracks are hypnotic, heady and intoxicating, channelling an intensity that translates into a unique, restless underground club energy. Futuristic and otherworldly, the entire record feels brilliantly unfamiliar and ground-breaking. An artist who thrives on pushing boundaries, Nkisi is playing with perceptions and preconceptions of references between African music and modern Western club culture and back, in a deft and subtle way. Her sound is highly original and distinctive and 7 Directions confirms her position as one of the most singular artists on today’s electronic music landscape.

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I, III, VI| 9/10