Albums

Recordings and Compositions

007 Trance Mediterranea Ecstatic Greece

Limited edition cassette on MBE series with photo book by Stéphane Charpentier
Bandcamp Link
Released April 20, 2022

RECORDINGS OF DOMADANA KADODI

Recorded in Mfumba, Ugada, April 2017 while on residency with Boutique Foundation and Nyege Nyege Tapes.

Boomkat Product Review 
After almost 15 years of peddling his own cd’s and tapes on the streets of Mbale, Robert Mugamba’s Kadodi finally get a proper introduction to the outside world thanks to the increasingly vital Nyege Nyege Tapes crew. ‘Kadodi’ pairs a transfixing percussive soundtrack with modern electronic contributions from Bamba Pana and Sun C, resulting in another remarkable document from the pearl of Africa. 
Extending privileged insight to the way ancient practices meet modernism near the Equator in East Africa, the ‘Kadodi’ LP renders a set of mesmerising, rhythmelodic percussion and crowd hollers, along with electrifying reinterpretations by local, East Ugandan producer Sun C and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania’s Bamba Pana. Placing ageless ritual music alongside its club antecedents, the results find tradition frictionlessly reconciled with modernism, drawing bridges between tribal identities and ancient belief systems, and clubs as contemporary sites of ritual enactment. 
The musical aspect of the ceremony is intended to induce initiates to a trance state, readying them to transcend from boyhood (basinde) into men (basani). The twice yearly rites of passage are such an occasion that their soundtrack has now transcended from original ritual use to find its ways into nightclubs, thanks to producers such as DMX, Papas and Sun C - the pioneer of Kadodi music’s shift into electronic spheres. 

On this set the ceremony starts on side A and continues into side B, documenting the Domadana Kadodi Performers brewing a bristling frenzy of polymetric percussion with hypnotic intensity coming as a result of their natural complexity. Following this utterly unique situation, Mbale native Sun C offers a near 10 minute electronic reinterpretation of Kadodi music on ‘Kaad 4’, mirroring the breathless cadence and intensity of the original in its sustained pitches and intricate syncopation of pipes and pointillist percussions. And you can trust Bamba Pana to take that one step farther on ‘Wateranga’, where he ramps the original drums with Singeli-style pattern and pace to irresistibly energetic effect. 

PROTOS OROFOS 10th YEAR COMPILATION

Protos Orofos (Greek for “first floor”) is a team that organize concerts for musicians of strange, experimental and electronic music. This concerts take place in an office on the first floor of 20 Olympiou Diamanti Street in Thessaloniki, Greece.
Every year a compilation CD featuring music by the artists that performed live during the previous year at Protos Orofos is released. protosorofos.gr

Underdrift

Limited edition cassette tape on Vertical Music

Early spring on the volcanic island of Nisyros, Greece: Bees swarm over almond trees on the caldera's edge. On the fertile crater soil, livestock graze. Mud pits burble and sulfur vents puff out thick vapor clouds. Solitary men ring the bells, call to their animals, and sing to themselves. Scops owls and bats call into the night.

credits

releases July 11, 2021
Mastered by Ludwig Berger

CREDITS

released September 27, 2018 

Tracks 1 & 2 recorded in Mfumba Village, Eastern Uganda by Alyssa Moxley in April 2017. 
Artwork Photography by Stéphane Charpentier 
Artwork by Aleczandah 
Mixing by Alyssa Moxley 
Master and Vinyl Cut by Matt Colton