Denfila

The second album from French electro producer Krazy Baldhead and crew builds on the success of Donso’s self-titled 2010 debut, exploiting the links between the traditional, trance-like music made by Mande hunters and the computer-generated beats of contemporary Western techno to create a thrillingly hybrid sound. Recorded in both Paris and Bamako, at the core of the project is the donso ngoni, the funky, banjo-like instrument of Mali’s mystical brotherhood of hunters, from which the collective takes its name. It’s augmented by the psych guitars of Sambala Kouyaté and Moh Kouyaté, with eloquent talking drums and the keening, single-string fiddle of Zoumana Téréta woven into a seamless, rhythmic mesh of electronic sound by the inventive programming of Krazy Baldhead (real name Pierre Antoine Grison). This richly textured sound-bed is at times downtempo and at others given a harder dance¬floor propulsion, but always with that mesmerising Mande pulse. On top of it all floats the extraordinary, note-bending voice of Gedeon Papa Diarra. Forget the exploitative, new age, ethno-dance claptrap of Deep Forest. This is how it should be done.