KINACT Kinshasa in Action

Label / Nyege Nyege Tapes
Category / Afro-Futurism, Industrial, Techno, Polyrhythmic
Code /

Operating at the intersection of sound, movement and sculpture, Kinshasa based street art collective KINACT collapse performance and ritual into music on their debut LP: Kinshasa in Action. Founded in 2015 by Eddy Ekete, Kinact have transformed Kinshasa’s public space into a living theatre, where refuse becomes regalia and street processions bear witness to pollution, superstition, gendered violence and postcolonial scars. Known for elaborate costumes fashioned from bottles, wires, tyres, dolls and detritus, their work bridges sculpture, activism and ancestor invocation., with costumes doubling as instruments, and tools of making reimagined as weapons of rhythm. In 2022, led by Ekete, a core group of members travelled to Nyege Nyege HQ in Kampala for a two-month residency, entering the studio for the first time. Primarily a street performance collective, Kinact transformed the Nyege studio into a makeshift workshop, converting costumes into instruments and using drills, motorcycle parts, saws, hammers and nails to augment homemade xylophones and improvised drums. The result is a body of work welded into the Congolese landscape, shockingly contemporary yet politically resonant, questioning the future of not only the DRC but the continent at large. Performers appear as mythic avatars: Falonne Mambu as La Femme Électrique; Athou Molimo Bongonda (Spiritus) as ancestral bell-ringer; Pape Noire as L’Homme Pneu; Dudamwanza as L’Homme Poubelle; Patrick Kitete as L’Homme Miroir; Bestaguy Bayoka as Coco Man / Sachet Man; and Eddy Ekete himself as Homme Cannette. Each embodies a sculpture-being; each contributes sonic matter to the whole. After a short, haunting introduction from Mambu, chanting “musique du Congo” over swirling synths, Kinact pull the listener deeper on Cercle de Tambour KinAct avec Manza, where industrial-strength staccato rhythms collide with undulating xenharmonic flute blasts and snapping percussion. Power drills whirr over hollow, plasticky drums on Atelier KinAct, while the collective’s circular saw becomes a driving rhythmic force on Gaingai, spiralling around a jerky, percussive thump. Elsewhere, Cercle de Tambour Kinact spins rusted polyrhythms into psychedelic spirals, corrupting syncopated sub-bass pulses with sheet-metal cracks, explosive knocks and hoarse incantations. Existing somewhere between the street, the dancefloor and the factory, this music captures contemporary Kinshasa in motion, its noise, its urgency and its contradictions. Across 11 tracks, a new chapter of industrial Congolese street sound takes shape, interlocking drills, hammers, saws, motorcycle engines, discarded pill packets, plastic bags, bamboo sticks and a homemade xylophone with raw chants, spectral invocations and communal drum circles. It sits somewhere between Einstürzende Neubauten’s industrial clang, Konono No.1’s distorted amplification and African Head Charge’s dread-soaked voodoo minimalism, yet remains grounded in Kinshasa’s street heat and night air. What emerges is a scorched suite of industrial Congolese percussion, equal parts scrapyard theatre and nocturnal trance.

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KINACT Kinshasa in Action

Same Label :: Nyege Nyege Tapes

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