Jazz Articles

Konono No.1: Meets Batida

by James Nadal
March 15, 2016

The city of Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the home of Konono No.1, a band which has taken the African likembé (thumb piano) from a folkloric instrument, into the electronic age. Back in the sixties, it's founder Mingiedi Mawangu figured out how to amplify the likembé, using salvaged car parts, and wired it through a guitar amp. Though he passed in 2015, his son Agustin Makuntima Mawangu carries on as leader, maintaining the amplified likembé as ...

Flat Earth Society: Cheer Me, Perverts!

by Ian Patterson
December 6, 2009

Fifteen-piece Belgian big band Flat Earth Society is the sonic equivalent of a freak show--weird, wonderful and like nothing you've come across before. Cheer Me, Perverts! is bursting with the energy of punk--sharing some of the anarchy, too--yet the CD exhibits intricate section harmonies and wonderful contrapuntal melodies. The soloists revel in their freedom, and the playing is characterized by idiosyncrasy and skill in equal measure. Zappa-esque and Ellingtonian in turn, Balkan brass meets 1970s prog rock, Cheer Me is ...

Various Artists: 20 Ways to Float Through Walls

by Ian Patterson
May 12, 2007

You don't have to go to Borneo's Rainforest Festival to catch Congolese thumb-piano musicians, riotous Balkan brass bands, Iranian divas, psychotic big-band jazz or chic bossa nova; Crammed Discs has it all, and more, on 20 Ways to Float Through Walls.

Throughout its quarter century existence Crammed Discs has produced an eclectic body of work which covers a fair old slice of the musical rainbow. This twenty-track compilation, compiled and sequenced by label founder Mark Hollander, showcases the label's output ...

Flat Earth Society: Psychoscout

by Nic Jones
October 22, 2006

Sit up and listen. Flat Earth Society is a big band with the integrity of a magpie, in the sense that it goes for the shiniest elements of a cultural outlook that takes in a kind of homage to Kurt Weill, incidental music for old TV detective series, and perhaps a touch of Henry Cow at its most formal. All that makes for listening that could have you laughing out loud or wondering happily over the sheer bravura of it ...

Flat Earth Society: Psychoscout

by Troy Collins
September 25, 2006

This Belgian big band has made quite a name for itself on the international underground scene. After touring with Mike Patton's postmodern metal band Fantomas, the group accrued some well deserved notoriety for its boundless spirit and unconventional outlook. While the members of the Flat Earth Society can readily ply pre-war 1940s big band charts with conviction and emotional commitment, they can also whip up a frenzy in the matter of such postmodern iconoclasts as John Zorn and Phillip Johnston.

Tuxedomoon: Bardo Hotel Soundtrack

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
June 29, 2006

Tuxedomoon emerged from an eccentric byway of the San Francisco music scene in the late 1970s. At the time, the group's music was a prescient mix of human and machine-made sounds, with a propulsive beat and a savory dash of anomie. In the decades since, the band's membership has fluctuated wildly, and the members scattered from California to Rotterdam to Brussels to Mexico City. Given the diffuse nature of their activities, it's hard to say whether they ...

Various Artists: Congotronics 2

by Chris May
December 1, 2005

Earlier this year, the Congolese trance band known as Konono No. 1--a Mad Maxian agglomeration featuring ingenious and massive DIY amplification, electronically distorted, outsize likembe thumb pianos, and drum and percussion instruments made from recycled industrial scrap--burst out of Kinshasa to shock and awe the European music scene with Congotronics. It wasn't a jazz album by any means, but it was sufficiently creative, dangerous, and uncompromising to appeal to the experimental margins of the jazz, world, rock, and dance music ...

Konono No.1: Congotronics

by Chris May
April 13, 2005

Once in a while an album comes along which is so insanely wonderful that--jazz or not--it needs to be brought to the attention of this community. Such an album is Congotronics by Kinshasa trance band Konono No.1.

Unless you live in Kinshasa, or were at Amsterdam's Paradiso club last year for the recording of track five, you are unlikely to have heard anything remotely like this throbbing slab of mutant roots meet lo-tech/hi-decibel electronica heaven ever before in ...