Adzi Akal by NZE NZE

NZE NZE is the fusion of artists Matthieu Ruben N'Dongo (Sacred Lodge), Tioma Tchoulanov and Gaëtan Bizien (UVB76). A three-headed entity convened and driven by the Astropolis festival at the end of 2020.

Singularity. From this anchor initiated by the Brest-based institution, a residency in the Parisian studios of Red Bull Music Academy will follow in early 2021, and the construction of a story told in the manner of an epic, and intertwined around the warrior songs of the Fang people of Central Africa (from which Matthieu Ruben N'Dongo's father comes) and the codes of industrial, post-punk and dub music dear to the three musicians. A filiation carried loud and clear by the singer of NZE NZE who draws from this geographical separation, due to the political context in Equatorial Guinea, a determining source of inspiration for this musical project. Real facts and imaginary counter-narrative collide to suggest a dystopian future and to underline with rage the ethical and economic problems of the meanders of the colonialist past.

Frontality. The sung texts are embodied because they are inherited and considered. Declaimed in Fang language (an idiom still used in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon), they imply a work on intonations, diction and thus reactivate the orality and the figure of the Mvett's poet. It is a dialogue through the belly, the guts, the breath drawn from the depths of the being and its abysses. A magnetic music, seat of spirits, dreams, terrors, instincts. The reflection of an unbridled afro-futurism which puts the foot on the gas pedal of shameless sonorities.

Musicality. Use of tape echo, track reinjection, spring reverb pedals, drum pad …
Here again, it is a story with a resolutely physical aesthetic that the musicians of NZE NZE tell us. Whether on record or on stage, the instruments as well as the voice are used as engines of the ferocious and fiery proposal which gives rhythm to the music of the trio.

The visual identity of Adzi Akal (literally "eat the metal") is the result of a collaboration with the set designer Romy Texier. The album is rooted in the element metal and plays on its polysemy (overexploited ores, violent music, indestructible material primordial within the transhumanism Mvett ...). The artist proposes her formal interpretation of the Alan plant, renowned for its hallucinogenic effects and used as a visionary agent in the Byeri rite, which implies a modified state of consciousness.

Possessed rhythms and guttural voice.