Live at Couleur Cafe

IF YOU LIKED THE ORIGINAL "CONGOTRONICS" CD BY KONONO NO. 1, THEN YOU WILL ALSO ENJOY THIS LIVE RECORDING OF THEM FROM BRUSSELS, BELGIUM. LOTS (HOME BUILT) AMPLIFIED "FINGER PIANOS" AND OTHER PERCUSSION INSTRUMENTS, WITH A LOT OF CALL AND RESPONSE CHANTING.

Say you're not just poor, but slums-of-Kinshasa-poor, and you want to make music, so the nearest junkyard is just the place, right? (Hey: hubcaps look like cymbals! Microphones use magnets, right? Well, SO DO auto alternators...)

The resulting music sounds exactly like what it is: bits of Buicks being bashed on, but boy oh boy do these boys ever know how to bash! The best, most vital music in the world today is coming right from these Kinshasa slums. And it's not just Konono: there's the equally-insane Kasai Allstars and at least five other Kinshasa bands all doing their own things.

I bought this album because there just isn't enough of this music available. If you're worried about poor sound quality from the cafe setting, don't be: this music don't know from sound quality because it NEVER HAD ANY to start with. The awful instruments (bang two hubcaps together while trying to think "Zildjian hi-hat"?), the pitiful amplifiers, the dreadful microphones are as necessary to this music as its sense of rhythm. These guys took what they had available, and became real mothers of invention. (Hey! Catchy name...)

One of the reasons this music makes people grin like idiots is because of how utterly MESSY it is, how many rules it just throws away. I love Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, liken it to a wonderful meal in a very fine restaurant. Congotronics is a cafeteria food-fight that segues into an orgy. And what key is it in? Now, there is a deep question indeed, but WHO CARES?

But if it's so radical, how come it's so instantly accessible, sounds so familiar? Well, because there's nothing new under the sun. Here's Keith Richards: "Both acoustics were put through a Philips cassette recorder. Just jam the mic right in the guitar and play it back through an extension speaker. The basic track ... was done on a mono cassette with very distorted overrecording, on a Phillips with no limiters."

He could easily be talking about Congotronics, but he's actually talking about recording a couple of all-time anthems called "Jumping Jack Flash" and "Street Fighting Man": go listen to them again, and keep this in mind: there are NO electric guitars on either track. The main riffs were put down in a motel room. Here's Charlie Watts: "'Street Fighting Man' was recorded on Keith's cassette with a 1930s toy drum kit called a London Jazz Kit Set ... It came in a little suitcase, and there were wire brackets you put the drums in; they were like small tambourines with no jangles... The snare drum was fantastic because it had a really thin skin with a snare right underneath, but only two strands of gut." What they're describing is not worlds away from Konono's kit.

Lest you think I'm just one guy ranting in the wilderness, experimental trance and techno musicians have lately lined up around the block to do interpretive mash-ups of Kinshasa music, for example Tradi-Mods Vs Rockers. Definitely give them a listen-to (I particularly like the Dr. Dre-style "Kule Kule"), but I think they're all just a little too ... clean and tidy. Likewise what's come out of liaisons Konono's done with the Usual Suspects: Bjork, Eno, David Byrne, yawn... I'd love to know what the band members think of all the strange people beating a path to their door, but I'm sure they'll survive the experience fairly intact.

After all, the band's proper name is T. P. Konono No.1, where T.P. stands for "tout puissant" (all-powerful). Proper name indeed.

› Go to Amazon U.S. to see both reviews  5.0 out of 5 stars