star

really sick album of congolese music centered around the likembé / thumb piano. the kalimba, which i'm more familiar with, is a westernized relative! the amplified/distorted metallic tones sound really wild, there's some bass sections, like on masikulu, that are sub-bassy and almost dubby, and the album as a whole is drone-y and rhythmic in a way i really only otherwise get from krautrock/kosmiche. i didn't expect most tracks to be over 7 minutes and i love it. big fan of this album!

really enjoyed the album yaral sa doom by wau wau collectif!

everything i know about it is from the bandcamp description so let me put an excerpt here:

In 2018, Swedish music archeologist and leftfield musician Karl Jonas Winqvist traveled to Toubab Dialaw, Senegal, a small fishing village turned hub of Senegal’s bohemian art scene. Over the next weeks, local musicians, percussionists, poets, and beat makers came together, sketching out ideas and recording free improvisation. Winqvist returned to Sweden, trading recordings back and forth over WhatsApp with Senegal based collaborator and studio engineer Arouna Kane.
“Yaral Sa Doom” is a Wolof phrase that means “educate the young.” Central to the album is this theme of education, with songs that directly address social issues facing contemporary Senegal, education, and immigration. "Today you must educate children with an instrument and art, when you teach them an instrument you teach them to use their spirit," says Djiby Ly.

i like it! i find it very playful and joyful, and it covers a lot of ground genre-wise. one song is like a trap beat with a wind section over it, much of it is the shaggy groovy guitar-heavy african jazz i also associate with some of mulatu astatke's work. one of the songs is almost an ambient track. it's good for me
i found this album by going through the bandcamp collection/wishlist of an artist that i really look up to. highly recommend doing this, there were so many heaters in there

friend put me on to various krautrock/kosmiche bands in preparation for a band we're trying to get together, standout for me was yeti by amon duul ii! the band came up from a student-led art commune in munich in the 60s, split with itself (hence amon duul ii instead of just amon duul), released a handful of albums, and broke up in a dozen years. i love leftists.
anyway. good album. big fan of the longer-form improv freakouts on the back half.

this week i've been rockin heavy w walrus, a japanese shoegaze band, and their record 光のカケラ (fragment of light? according to google translate, help me out here). the tab i had this open in was fermenting for months as one of my 100+ tabs of "music to check out" so i do not remember how i found this even a little bit, i thought i got it from this also-great bandcamp article (shoutout blue smiley!) but they're not mentioned at all. a mystery! good album tho!