Les Mamans du Congo & RRobin

Blending any sort of traditional music with electronic effects is always a risk. Meanings may be lost, or rhythms diluted. Purists are inevitably incensed. But this lovely project – as much art as music – has been handled with care, with the French Institute in Brazzaville bridging a meeting between the Mamans du Congo, a fluid collective of Congolese women led by charismatic singer and percussionist Gladys Samba, and left-field French beatmaker RRobin. The latter's penchant for found sounds, mashed up or stretched out, made him an inspired pairing with the Mamans, whose members sing ancient Bantu lullabies and stories of female emancipation over rhythms played out on kitchenware – forks, pestles, baskets – whose functionality is subverted, rendered revolutionary.

It's a gentler, dreamier, altogether more feminist take on Congolese DIY projects such as Konono No 1, which famously used pots, pans and hand-made microphones salvaged from discarded car parts. RRobin's hiphop aesthetic is folded thoughtfully into a work that emerged from ten days' worth of (sometimes trance-induced) improvisation. On ‘Sans Pagne’ and ‘Meki’ Samba's percussive Lari-language lyrics have a rapper's natural flow, cutting a swathe through a cross-genre dreamscape; the likes of ‘Boum’, an anthem for women battling patriarchy, and ‘Ngaminke’, an ode to the Congo River, balance sweet-voiced soulfulness with choral harmonies and snatches of rhythms that beating here, scratching there, have an impressionistic, even shamanistic, magic. Wonderful.