Tradi-Mods vs Rockers – Alternative Takes on Congotronics

The Congotronics remix album was inevitable, of course. The primitively electrified ambience of Konono No 1 and the Kasai Allstars unwittingly echoes some of the wilder sonic shores currently being visited in contemporary indie rock/electronic music. As someone who has generally detested electronic remixes of African music (the DJ-led aberrations performed on Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Cesaria Evora have to be two of the worst records ever reviewed in Songlines), I approached these two discs with trepidation. Yet the vast majority of these 26 reworkings are terrific and reveal a genuine empathy with the original material, whether it’s straightforward remixes, cover versions, homages or radical, sample-heavy reinventions. Deerhoof add guitar, bass, drums and their own lyrics to a Kasai tune to create the superbly atmospheric ‘Travel Broadens The Mind’. Animal Collective – possibly the coolest indie rock band in the world right now – sample the thumb pianos from Kasai’s ‘Quick As White’ and addtheir own deft touches to create the kind of sound Brian Wilson might have made if he’d been born in the Congo. Andrew Bird delivers a medley of Congotronics tunes using processed violins and Megafaun gloriously pit thumb pianos and bluegrass banjos against each other. Argentina’s Juana Molina builds a hallucinogenic lullaby she calls ‘Hoy Supe Que Viajas’, on top of a Kasai rhythm track. Even Oneida’s re-shaping of Konono into a synth-heavy slab of Krautrock seems entirely in keeping with the Congotronics spirit. A handful of tracks don’t work, such as Shackleton’s dubstep remix of Kasdai’s ‘Mukuba’, which spends ten minutes layering pointless four-to-the floor electro-dance beats over the original. But they’re rare blemishes on an album I expected to hate, but can’t stop playing.