Shit, there’s DIY and then there’s DIY: when did your average, wilfully obscure avant punker CRAFT HIS OWN MICROPHONES FROM WOOD, huh? Ordering cheap Chinese condensers over a broadband connection isn’t an option in a nation brought to its knees by corruption and massacre, I guess. Formed over 25 years ago in the Democratic Republic of Congo by Mingiedi, the genial, pink shirted virtuoso of the likembe (thumb piano), Konono #1 use everything from pots and pans to a sound system constructed from salvaged car parts (environmental awareness, Chris Martin? cop that, beeyatch). Their sound is brutal and hypnotic, buzzing and distorted like Fela Kuti’s Afrika ’70 and ten Jaki Liebezeits, mechanized, bionicized and on a mission to level the life-obscuring conceits of the developed world to dust. 

Call and response vocals boom from ancient megaphones with a furious joy. Thumb pianos, massed and played over three different registers hit the ears like a shower of needles, til you no longer hear the instruments, only the incessant ringing of your own overstimulated nerves. Some fools have labelled these guys ‘avant garde’ and compared their work to a thousand and one IDM laptop wankers, but this is made without Western influence, untouched by our toxic trend to reduce music to a soundtrack by which we can watch ourselves being watched. Doubtless the fact of Konono #1’s creative autonomy doesn’t sit well with the chin-strokers who insist that Eno and David Byrne ‘invented’ hip hop in 1981 by marrying fat beats to the musical magpie aesthetic of Holger Czukay’s ‘Movies’. Hard shite; despite this being a studio recording (their debut having been captured live) this is a living album crafted by living souls, created in the moment, of the moment, for the moment. 

Opening tracks ‘Lufuala Ndonga’ and ‘Masikulu’ form a devasting one-two punch, a tightly-knit, pulverising and infectious wave of sound that keeps you hooked on every beat despite their total length clocking in at over 17 minutes. Junkyard percussion (a whole continent removed from the quirky world of Tom Waits), bellowed incantations and that incredible top layer of thumb piano combine and lock into rhythms that are universal in emotion, not by sterile design. ‘Kule Kule’ places the tuned instruments higher in the mix and sheds some of the aggressive distortion (something the band originally wanted to lose altogether, now close to a trademark). A haze of equatorial heat looms over that and the rickety, spluttering ‘Paradiso’, as though Lee Perry came over and offered to chuck his atmospheric magic into the pot. The reprise of ‘Kule Kule’ features a winding male lead vocal with a rich, dense chorus, those thumb pianos always glittering in the background like sunlight on calm water. ‘Mama Liza’ brings back the aggressive rhythms of the opening track and steps up the intensity of those call and response vocals, roaring with an authority and command that would blow any blues shouter off the stage. 

It’s no surprise that Bjork employed these guys, alongside the inventive drummer Chris Corsano to work on her latest effort ‘Volta’, but for me her works are too often compromised by her obvious intention to innovate or startle, those warp/Warp-speed electronic beats and self-conscious gasps and yelps getting on my tit in no time. Yup, Konono #1, whisked from obscurity in the most turbulent and poverty-stricken of continents to the glittering firmament of ATP festivals and glowing Pitchfork reviews are being aggressively co-opted. Given that Mingiendi has led a band for a quarter century in a nation where men have an average life expectancy of 42, sure he won’t be reduced to parody of his former self any time soon. But it’s disheartening to do a web search on these guys and come across constant comparisons to every New York noisenik out there. Adolescent revolt and angsty howls of discontent are not the game here. This music is uplifting, not nihilistic, as joyful and inclusive as Parliament or Sly and the Family Stone. Everyone can get down to this shit. The fact that it’s genuinely remarkable to hear and possessed of a uniqueness that can’t be formulated is just the sweetest bonus.