Sat all civilised at a table at the Metropolis with some beardy Wire readers, I sift through the election news on my phone while I wait for the show to start. I swear I didn’t give a toss a week ago but now I’m hooked on this shit like it’s disappointment crack.
I am swiftly distracted by the appearance of Konono No.1, who are are up first, contrary to the advertised running order (or at least my understanding of it). Initially the chaps and chapess look a little uneasy standing before the lake of crusties at the front of the stage. However, it’s not long before a wave of jolly momentum soon replaces any uncertainty.
Konono’s sound emanates mostly from the electrified thumb pianos wielded by 3 of the sextet (the other 3 being responsible for percussion of the regular variety or made from bits of cars). The front man’s left hand produces a sub-bass throb which propels the set. Its pretty amazing that these sounds are produced largely by nails and scrap metal, although I was a little disappointed to see a couple of Ampegs on stage augmenting / replacing the home made sound system. The Metropolis’ shiny pa produces a sound far less fuzzy and raw than on record. However, Konono still manage to sound like Lightning Bolt played on a broken music box during a polyrhythmic ritual on Skull Island despite this increase in fidelity.
The front man seems particularly full of Umbongo tonight, frequently instructing the crowd to “dance dance dance”. At times even my feet oblige. As do the elbows of the hippies in front of me, smashing my face in.
The hypnotic waves of percussion and no-fi electronics create a whirlpool of positive vibes and hairy man sweat. After a while the freaky dancing down the front morphs into a loved up neo-moshpit. At no point during the set do I imagine the band being introduced by Jools Holland. Rad.
After a brief intermission the Omar Souleyman band take to the stage. Souleyman is joined by a dude playing a big Middle-Eastern surf guitar and bloke on a couple of giant keyboards that sound like angry electric sheep. Omar begins chanting in his distinctively smooth but sibilant croon, accompanied by the circuit-bent Sega Megadrive synths, before huge kick drums transform him into psychedelic mega-party wizard.
Like Konono, Souleyman’s live sound differs from the recordings as it’s separated from the often sinus-pain-inducing low fidelity. As much as I love the griminess of his cassette dubbed recordings, the big clean sound here benefits his set by maximising the ass-shakage factor. Omar floats around the stage like a cosmic rave dictator, commanding an hour or so of badass intergalactic party jams. Like raw horse flavoured ice cream, this was a strange but sweet experience.
“Shift Al Mani” & “Leh Jani” are predictable highlights, the former apparently translates as “I Saw Her”, though for all I know it could be about a mate of Souleyman’s named Albert Mani who’s always sat in his favourite chair: “Oh’s, shift Al Mani, I wanna watch fuckin’ Neighbours, in it”.
At some point I realise I have absolutely no context for this music, and am probably not particularly qualified to review it (or much else for that matter). Sure I can Google the tits out of both bands but as far as I know Konono no.1 could be a Congolese boy band and Souleyman is Syria’s answer to Ricky Martin. Despite my ignorance both bands transcend any native context, imagined or otherwise, as kick-ass Tatooine cantina-band parti krews, able to unite disparate crowds in silly dancing and elbows to the face with their grin-widening, positive tunes (Well I assume they are positive, maybe they are chanting “what a hideous bunch of nerds”. I dunno).
Leaving the Metropolis sometime later, my high spirits are kicked in the bollocks by the news that David Cuntchin has made a successful bid to become the new queen. That’s balance I suppose.
