{"id":109145,"date":"2022-06-23T18:10:52","date_gmt":"2022-06-23T16:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/?p=109145"},"modified":"2022-06-23T19:02:59","modified_gmt":"2022-06-23T17:02:59","slug":"troposphere-7-rey-sapienz-mb-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/troposphere-7-rey-sapienz-mb-jones\/","title":{"rendered":"Troposphere 7, Congolese rockets and DIY electronics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

July 10th, 2007. The day is overcast and a group of scientists in white lab coats gather in a  remote bush somewhere in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A large thin object of about 4 meters is hidden under a metallic tarp as the scientists and participants move to a makeshift bunker full of laboratory equipment and computers; a sheet-metal mission control. Front and center, Jean-Patrice Keka Ohemba Okese sits solemnly with \u201cD.T. Azimuts, Division Spatiale” embroidered on his back (aka D\u00e9veloppement Tous Azimuts, a clever astro-pun roughly translating to \u201cdevelopment in all directions\u201d). The rocket, Troposphere 2, is revealed from underneath the tarp and the countdown begins. Smoke begins to billow at the base and in a sonic-whish the rocket fires into the air, shooting just out of sight. The team and bystanders rush into the field with shouts of joy, hands in the air, carrying Jean-Patrice Keka Ohemba Okese on their shoulders in celebration of the DRC\u2019s first successful rocket launch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jean-Patrice Keka Ohemba Okese<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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2012, Nord Kivu. Bahati Sapiens Mo\u00efse Dhekana aka Rey Sapienz begins the long trek from his home in a volcanic region of eastern DRC, towards Kampala, Uganda, intent on recording an album. After his arrival, the flames of civil war reignite on his home front, closing the roads and leaving Rey in a long term political limbo. The young musician turns to an Ableton manual left behind from one of East Africa\u2019s vagabond DJs. The next two weeks Rey forwent sleep, combing through each page of the software\u2019s handbook, injecting Zoom recordings of the city-sound into the software and entering another dimension of what was to be the birth of Congo Techno and Hakuna Kulala. The former a malapropism that has less to do with techno than Congolese soukous and American trap and the latter a tribute to the zombified era of Rey\u2019s watershed moment into electronics meaning \u201cno sleep\u201d in Swahili and the name of a Nyege Nyege sublabel that hosts East Africa\u2019s most experimental, apocalyptic and fearless underground electronic music. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rey Sapienz – Transmusicales – credit: Nico<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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2018, Busan, South Korea. An American from Western Massachusetts widely believed to be a defected special agent (but really isn’t) turned DIY musician is planning a trip to Kampala with his Ugandan wife. After all, \u201cEven Spies Fall in Love\u201d, or so says the second track MB Jones\u2019 2018 album R.O.K. Spy<\/em>. Collecting intel, MB Jones stumbles upon the Nyege Nyege imprint based in Kampala after a music blog places his release next to one of Nyege Nyege\u2019s own. The serendipity cause for chuckle, MB Jones sent an electronic transmission to the crew hoping to schedule a rendez-vous on his upcoming trip. After arriving in Kampala and entering the villa, MB Jones is introduced to Rey Sapienz sitting comfortably in the studio, a shadow king of East Africa\u2019s electronic underground. The duo spent the next 3 days locked in the studio, creating a new sound from scratch, colliding the sonic worlds, embracing the cosmic spirit of the moment, the essence of DIY, christening their project Troposphere 7<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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MB Jones<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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What takes place on Troposphere 7’s album Grey Parrots<\/em> is as much of a sci-fi mishmash as the stories of the characters involved in its creation. The album opener, \u201cBoda Boda Ride\u201d is a broken and revamped display of minimal downtempo. Rey\u2019s identifiable fatty bass and up-tempo flutes are mixed with the slowburn synths of MB Jones\u2019 repertoire. \u201cButa Na Moyi\u201d, premiered here on PAM for the first time, has the kick-driven rhythm Hukana Kulala embraces, but is an exception among the more dissident and messy soundscapes that play out across the project. We\u2019re given a \u201cKorean Weather Report\u201d on the backend of the album with a vocal performance by Korean citizen Eun Young Ju to the tune of helicopter blades and glitchy AI vocal manipulations. Like Jean-Patrice Keka Ohemba Okese\u2019s Congolese space program, the album is pieced together with the blind expertise of each participant using the gritty will of DIY electronics and wrangling together unlikely facts of the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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