Released via the electric Ugandan label, the Fulu Miziki producer’s project will be “firmly rooted in Congolese traditional sounds” and “de-materialized into distant lands”.
La Roche’s upcoming project has the objective of painting “a vivid, pineal tickling four dimensional picture of Congolese culture in 2022”. To do so, the producer immersed himself in traditional sounds and electronic music, while also using street noises from the bustling Kinshasa megalopolis (“digital watch alarms, car horns, gunshots, screams”), refashioning this mix into completely out of time tracks.
The title track, already available, is built around “an emotional chant of ‘liye, liye’ that drifts around a glacial electronic beat that sounds like DJ Screw making day zero grime, all 909 percussion and shattering glass”. Eight other tracks will follow, all deeply rooted in the Fulu Miziki’s philosophy: grabbing ideas from the DRC’s opulent musical history and from Kinshasa’s energizing hustle to produce hypnotic and hybrid electronic bangers.
Liye Liye by La Roche, out on February 21 via Nyege Nyege.
