Electric Mambo by Chouk Bwa & The Ångstromers

The first release of Chouk Bwa & the Ångstromers combines a nouveau dub sensitivity with a Haitian rhythm science. It is a new collaboration between the traditional Haitian Mizik Rasin (roots music) band, Chouk Bwa Libète, and the abstract sound engineering of the Ångstromers. The result is a very distinctive blend: a kind of future-leaning Vodou dub.

The Chouk Bwa rhythm scientists are steeped in the deep traditions and long cultural memory found in Gonaïves, Haïti. Branching out of Africa into an expanding Diaspora, this incarnation seeks a new soundscape for each evocation. Never a retromania always obsessed with return, Chouk Bwa & the Ångstromers unearth untimely dances where rituals of the future can be heard leaking into the precisions of the past.

The two tracks were selected from the first meeting with the Ångstromers at Café Central, Brussels, recorded live in September 2016. Modular synths and other vintage electronic instruments bring another dimension to Chouk Bwa’s music, although obviously it is always the band’s groove and fluent tempo that leads the energy of the ensemble: no laptops, no drum machines. There are certain freedoms that cannot be coerced. Even more, the electronic instruments are wired directly to the drums that feed them with impacts and caresses. All the Vodou families are there with their many rhythms and songs. Radical Vodou roots for urban audiences.

Haitian six-piece Chouk Bwa meets Belgian production duo, The Ångströmers. Afro-Caribbean voodoo polyrhythms meet bass-weight dub electronics.