V.A.: Tradi Mods vs Rockers
Crammed Discs V.A. : Tradi Mods vs Rockers -2CD- (VAR,pub.2011)***°
-alternative takes on Congotronics-
The label asked 26 “rockers” to show their take and version on the Congotronics releases, discoveries from new Congo, vibrant with life and creative and experienced sounds and shaking rhythms. Although all these rockers got their kick from the series, it is clear their starting point is different, often studio and more production based, less of a life experience, and in that way a bit more empty while being influenced by this energy and feel. While going with the thrill of the moment, most of these new band makes something which is nicely entertaining without coming to make or to find or to create something new, so in the end they were clearly influenced just one way by the Africans but as a result have little to return to contribute to them afterwards, even though the Africans were already pretty complete in their own context. But don’t get me wrong on this compilation: the double album hangs well together because of certain returning elements and its own, mostly western vision.
On the first album it is especially the influence of the sound of the mbira (or thumbpiano) with the bottle rhythm and the rhythmic complexity which inspired the western bands, trying to adapt it, grab it without being able to express more than a projection of it, with a more confused and blurry version of its complexity in the arrangements, from or for their own points of view this still was a nice experiment with a few expanded associations. While Deerhoof admits they didn’t grab the complete picture, with their honest interpretation they have delivered the most rewarding transformation of them all, a real meeting point between different worlds. Animal Collective slowed everything down and made the African ideas more vague through which their own sound comes through. Jherek Bishoff was also inspired by the “Lambarena” release (Bach meets African music), but still turns it into marching band simplicity, and the good starting ideas seem to become lost in the repetitive factors a bit. And then we have the synthesis towards loops, dub or more mechanical translations of the African live energy into something more stagnant than before. Juana Molina just incorporated the inspiration into a song of hers.
The second CD is even more rhythm based in a DJ/remix in studio sense, with modern ideas and sometimes a darkening effect with the original sunny lightness gleaming through. This CD is mixed very well and this is a calmer sort of trance world feast. Interesting is the banjo version with remixed elements of Megafaun. Some bands reinterpret the African guitar playing, only few try to reconsider the bottle rhythms. For airplay I picked out the Au track because of their stuffed arrangements that recall as much of a gamelan piece than the inspirations from thumb piano origin.
From a point of view of the “rockers” which include the studio mix groups too this compilation was surely successful and enjoyable. It would be a bit unfair to compare the viewpoint of the African new traditionalists with those from the western artists, because then the western visions seems more like a play and not like an extraverting creative experience. The western viewpoint as a world of a sum of individuals is more room-or studio-based and from an introverted order. It reveals in the end a lot of entertaining variations, which as a direct result are worth sitting through.
