MARK ERNESTUS' NDAGGA RHYTHM FORCE - Khadim - LP - Black Vinyl
LP - Black Vinyl
A decade since debuting as Ndagga Rhythm Force, Mark Ernestus’ incredible band draw on 100’s of hours studio and live practice for a staggering new suite of Senegalese x Berlin-styled mbalax steppers that prove, where needed, why they’re one of the best to do it right now.
With ‘Khadim’ Ndagga ditch their guitars and recalibrate a more lissom trio of voice and acoustic instruments bound with Ernestus’ Prophet 5 synth - the same model he’s relied upon since the Basic Channel days - on four extended songs that allow more light, space and emotion into a signature, rolling sound, centre-staging Mbene Seck’s husky diva croon over Bada Seck and Serigne Mamoune Seck’s dual, polymetric percussion, and judiciously juggled with Ernestus’ anti-gravity basses and plangent dub chord syncopation.
In traditionally open-ended frameworks the quartet take all the time needed to stretch out and wrap heads into the tapestries of their storytelling grooves. A newfound atmospheric pressure and presence emerges in procession from the location recordings that fringe ‘Lamp Fall’ and its ode to a local mosque, reverberating in acres of implied space set by the ricocheting sabar drums and near-infrasonic subs, thru to the devotional depths of ’Nimzat’, rippling with thunderous chords and doleful ache.
At its core are the LP’s most impressive parts; ‘Dieuw Bakhul’ uncoils a spellbinding Wolof tale of treachery to the rafters amid tempestuous chords that writhe stereo-wide with red-lining bite whilst drums knot sinuous, serpentine, to be resolved in the breathtaking 13’ steppers’ flight of ‘Khadim’, which lyrically hails Islam’s role in guiding Senegal to postcolonial times, spiritually meditates on bluest minor key riffs, and physically elevates bodies with aerodynamic finesse and hypnotic chronics kin to the best reggae and its offshoots.
Nine years after the group’s last LP, the Basic Channel co-founder’s latest collaboration with Senegalese players is an even more spacious, psychedelic fusion of dub techno and mbalax drumming. - Pitchfork
Tracklist:
A1 Lamp Fall
A2 Dieuw Bakhul
B1 Khadim
B2 Nimzat