Somanti

The follow-up to 2020’s Vodou Alé opens with the Creole voices of Haitian vodou troupe Chouk Bwa echoing eerily between the speakers before the massed drums kick in and Belgian techno duo The Ångströmers twist the entire, extraordinary concoction into a swirling, dubby avant-garde electronic mix. It’s powerful, intense and mysterious trance music that might seem equally at home in a vodou temple in Port-au-Prince or at a rave in a Brussels nightclub. After recording Vodou Alé the pandemic meant that the two groups had to wait two years before they could get together again in 2022 for a European tour, during which the material on Somanti evolved organically. At the end of the tour they went into the studio and the energy was such that the material was recorded live in little more than a day before The Ångströmers spent a fortnight adding their layers of vintage analogue electronica.

After the opening title track this collaborative album continues in a similarly clattering and hypnotic vein, less song-based than its predecessor and concentrating more on the authentic ritual music associated with vodou ceremony and invocations to the spirit-deities of Legba, Ogou and crew.