Vodou Ale

Album review

Haitian ensemble Chouk Bwa play mizik rasin, a contemporary style influenced by vodou ceremonial traditions. Initially known as Chouk Bwa Libète, the group released their debut album, Se Nou Ki La!, on French label Buda Musique in 2015, and brought their exuberant performances to audiences in North America and Europe. While in Brussels in 2016, they met up with experimental musicians and engineers Frédéric Alstadt and Nicolas Esterle (aka noise artist Ripit), both of whom run Ångström Records and Ångström Mastering. Performing together at Café Central in Brussels, the Belgian gentlemen added modular synths and electronics to Chouk Bwa's commanding percussion rhythms and celebratory vocals. A single titled "Electric Mambo" was taken from the performance, and the musicians continued working together, recording in Port au Prince and Brussels over the next few years. 2020 full-length Vodou Alé is a fantastic collection of spirited rhythms and call-and-response vocals, enhanced with surreal electronic textures and dubby effects. Steady, pulsating hand drums are at the heart of these songs, with Jean Claude “Sambaton” Dorvil's passionate cries delivering hopeful lyrics in Creole, backed up by the joyful chorus of Maloune Prévaly and Edèle "Sasufi" Joseph. The Ångströmers let the roots musicians do their thing, but they stretch the sound out in different directions, accenting the bass or adding a lingering mist of delay effects. They ground the rousing chant "Move Ten" and the racing, fervent "Odjay - Nati Kongo" with churning, fuzzy bass synths, and insert prickly electronics in between the beats of the busy percussion instrumental "Rårå" and the more steadily paced "Kay Marasa Dub." "Sali Lento" is the closest they get to making full-on rave music, with trippy, siren-like synths swirling around bouncing drums and truly exultant vocals by people who sound absolutely in love with life, all with deep bass making the earth shake below. Chouk Bwa's abundant energy is never compromised or dulled by the studio trickery; rather, the electronics embellish the otherworldly qualities of music which already seems supernatural.

© Paul Simpson /TiVo