Volume 2: Echos Hypnotiques

From latter-day obscurity to the plush aisles of London’s Barbican, the Orchestre Poly-Rythmo story is a typically colourful one, with luck, longevity and a spellbound French journalist all playing their part. It likewise owes a not inconsiderable debt to Analog Africa mastermind Samy Ben Redjeb, whose archaeological audio efforts here make writing a review seem positively frivolous by comparison. While Volume 1 focused on the group’s recordings for assorted shoestring labels, Echos Hypnotiques covers their work for Benin’s premier imprint, Albarika Store. If that sounds like a local supermarket chain, be assured that the music is, for the most part, defiantly non-generic – there are no two-for-one James Brown knock-offs here. Instead, there’s a potent alchemy of ancient voodoo rhythms with contemporary strains of soul and funk: it’s Afro-beat, Cotonou style. It kicks off deceptively, with a one-two handclap, hand drums and the kind of luminously vintage organ riff you’d be more likely to hear in Peruvian chicha. But this is a lull before a percussive maelstrom as dense, humid and saline as the mangrove-stitched coast its hails from. It’s African music at its most relentless – and most relentlessly psychedelic. In its own way it’s a precursor to the current crop of Congolese futurists. Witness the trance-inducing cross-currents of ‘Koutomé’ or the way ‘Mi Ve Wa Se’ hammers its organ lines into an electrifying, eight-beat circuit, ignited by the syllabic yelp of the Fon-language vocals. Even at its most carefree, amid the soul breakdowns of ‘Malin Kpon O’ or the straight-up rumba of ‘Zizi, it commands head and feet: très, très hypnotique indeed.