KOKOKO! : BUTU
The key thing I look for in KOKOKO!’s music, that post-Afrobeat density married to electronic and synthesized melodies, is clearly retained on BUTU. But for this, their second full-length record, the balance shifts: vocals are dialed down, synthesizers are dialed up. The tonality has shifted; there is now a near-synthwave sense of dread and tension, black leather shining under Kinshasa sun, a broiling sense of barely contained rage buried under electronic dance music. I have a pet complaint here: with vocal performances this aggressive and charismatic, it’s a shame they’re mixed as low as they are, given that in the right contexts I could easily imagine their vocalists being pushed as powerhouses. Still: the beat, though, that key component of Afrobeat (hence, certainly, its name), retains its fiery pulse.
A struggle I had in writing about this album was similar to that I suffered with Antibalas years ago. Records of this kind of rhythmic density compel me to pick up the sticks myself, to play cross rhythms and learn layered parts. Musicians will understand, as will fine artists; there is a kind of non-verbal communication of complex sentiment you can achieve in these spaces, where intermingling with it feels more rigorously honest than translating it to words. That’s how I can sense a punk or metal adjacent sense of power in dread through these pieces; you play it, you feel it. It is 2024 now, but it may as well be 1974, so easy it is to see why, 50 years ago, punks and ex-proggers crate digging found music like this and suddenly changed the directions of their respective worlds.
The most fascinating thing to me is the structure of these pieces, which by and large eschew verse-chorus architecture for something more developmental and conversational. A rhythm appears, is challenged or reinforced by cross-rhythms, which are then answered by a vocal. An element is muted, leaving room for a new response. The shape evolves in a richly intuitive way, feeling never like a breakage even song to song. The sweat-slicked leather you can almost smell off the record carries itself into the nightclub, where dimmed lights and striations of neon paint bodies, skins both human and animal tanned and wrapped, in glowering color. These are organic pieces, slithering like serpents.
My biggest question following the group’s 2019 debut Fongola has been answered to my satisfaction. Any intimation of this group’s music as lo-fi has melted away in the clearly much-improved production and engineering present here, sharpening an already strong debut offering to something that feels absolutely futuristic. African futurism, distinct from Afrofuturism with its post-diasporic flair, paints this beautifully alien vision of futurity. In Africa certainly like in America, in Latin America, in the Middle East and Central and Southern Asia, on and on, we see fascism and its thuggish bullies arise. But the response here, this form of protest music, feels vibrant with impossible life where it so often feels our own revolutionary imaginations in America, mine included, are clouded with a sense of obvious fatalism. There is still rage here, a rebellious pain, but it feels productive, constructive, building something worthy from the rubble of former lives. I am not one who fetishizes hope; in politics as in life, hope is a poor substitute for work, be it rehabilitating yourself or the world you are in. But a slick animal joy, the kind that bursts like bombs in the heart, certainly helps, especially when it feels honest and not like a nihilistic cope in the face of death.
In a dream world, this record would open doors for KOKOKO! to collaborate with figures from HEALTH to Sumac, from The Body to Denzel Curry. There’s a lot of meat on these bones, and the deeply conversational approach to rhythm and melody shown by these players signals that they are ready for a wider stage, collabs that highlight their work in front of new audiences. Their emotional palette on BUTU may be more constrained than on Fongola, replicating in a way the more deeply synthesized move that Ibibio Sound Machine likewise made, but it also shows their capacity for really mining an emotional space, finding new angles and developments that still feel fit snug together. Their debut was promising and this is confirmation. May they break ever bigger.
Label: PIAS
Year: 2024
Similar Albums:
Kokoko! : BUTU
Note: When you buy something through our affiliate links, Treble receives a commission. All albums we cover are chosen by our editors and contributors.
