DRC Music - Kinshasha One Two (Oxfam)
3/5
By: Thomas Hannan
As fun as it is to follow Damon Albarn’s continued journey of sonic exploration - here putting together rhythms, voices and instruments as disparate as those of Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs and Tout Puissant Mukalo on the same record for a bloody laugh - don’t we all just kinda wish he’d get back to writing songs again?
Recent successes such as Blur’s heyday-recalling-but-not-a-comeback-single ‘Fool’s Day’ and the gorgeous ditties such as ‘Apple Carts’ that littered his critically acclaimed Doctor Dee opera suggest that he certainly hasn’t lost the knack for conjuring up a heartbreaking melody. But alas, Kinshasha One Two is far from the long-rumoured Damon Albarn solo album proper. Instead, it’s the result of what happened when “the man who invented Britpop” (copyright Alex James) visited the Democratic Republic of Congo with the aforementioned T.E.E.D., long time collaborator Dan The Automator, Jneiro Jarel, XL Recordings head honcho Richard Russell (eh?), Actress, Marc Antoine, Alwest, Rodaidh McDonald and Kwes to make an album in the space of five days with local musicians, sell it, and give all the profits to Oxfam. Kind.
Of course, this fascination with African music hasn’t arrived completely out of the blue. With Mali Music, Albarn has already written/curated a whole album of the stuff, and his Honest Jon’s Records label and shop remains as admirably dedicated as ever to placing sounds from far-off climes into the tote bags of the hipsters of Portobello Road. Furthermore, ‘African Space Anthem’ has the kind of groove to it that Damon has spent the past few years trying ingrain on the Western consciousness via his work with Gorillaz, and if combined with the excellently infectious riff from ‘K-Town’ and a guest experience from a rapper in need of a career resurgence (Nas? I dunno...), it could have easily fit on The Fall.
Maybe I’ve just been following Albarn’s career way too closely over the past, I don’t know, 22 years (I am definitely guilty of that), but it’s weird that an album this forward thinking can contain so little in the way of surprises. A portion of it – such as ‘Lingala’s incessant yet ignorable percussion workout, and the overlong snooze of ‘We Come from the Forest’ – drift by in a manner that’s all too ignorable. Yet in other places – the fuzzed up bass mess of ‘Customs’, Jupiter Bokondji’s terrifying turn on ‘Ah Congo’ and the aforementioned melodic prowess of ‘K-Town’ – it’s a wonder, a sound as vibrant in the ears as the list of collaborators is exciting to read on paper.
And in balance, there is more of the latter to this album than the former, making it a record that although shouldn’t be labelled a life changer is certainly worth searching down. With his fingerprints all over it, DRC Music’s leader should take a sizeable heap of the credit - the fact that this album comes across as genuinely enthused about unfamiliar foreign sounds rather than merely a piece of patronising cultural tourism is testament to how closely Albarn studies, lives and thoroughly enjoys the music of the spaces he’s immersing himself in. That said, the focus on putting together tunes in such a piecemeal, sample-based fashion, rather than racking one’s brains about their composition before a note is even played, means Kinshasha One Two is certainly no Graceland. Mind you, what is?
DRC Music - Kinshasa One Two (see http://drcmusic.org ) by DRC Music
Artists in this article: DRC Music
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