Leave the Bones

The pairing of Haitian ensemble Lakou Mizik and Grammy-winning electro wiz Joseph Ray is unlikely, sure, but only on paper. Blending traditional music with electronic effects has become a thing of late, what with Italian producer Khalab reworking the Sahel sounds of musicians in the M’Berra refugee camp, and French beatmaker Rrobin folding found sounds into the story-songs of Les Mamans du Congo. Ray’s involvement makes the most sense: Lakou Mizik has collaborated with the starry likes of Arcade Fire’s Win Butler and New Orleans pianist Jon Cleary – and Ray fell for Lakou back in 2015, noting the parallels between their hazy mix of relentless percussion, voodoo ritual chants and visceral rara dance tunes and his club-floor trance. His vision cinematic, his mind expanded, he set about helming a collaboration that melds time signatures to drum patterns, includes 1930s field recordings from Alan Lomax and the sampled, stretched out sounds of mbira and conch shells.

Deftly applied beats and effects reinforce the mysticism and longing within Lakou’s traditional spirituals, work songs and Creole-language tunes penned by group leader and poet Sanba Zao. ‘Kite Zo A’ is a drum-fuelled wigout. ‘Lamizé Pa Dous’ (Misery Isn’t Sweet), sweetly voiced by Nadine Remy, is bluesy, entreating and spacious. While the horn-happy freneticism of ‘No Rival!’ will be too much for some, ‘Ogou (Pran Ka Mwen)’ gets the digital/organic balance just right. Message-driven, lovingly made, this is an album to play on repeat.