Nakibembe Embaire Group: Nakibembe Embaire Group
Nakibembe Embaire Group: Nakibembe Embaire Group
Format: VINYL LP
Wanting to order from us over the holiday period but need some more information. We are here to help! Please see our Christmas Shipping page for more information.
On average, orders containing available-to-ship items are processed and dispatched within 1-2 business days, although this is not guaranteed.
Orders containing preorder items will ship as 1 fulfillment once all items in the order are available to ship.
Please note, Tower Records Merchandise and Exclusives are dispatched separately. On average, these items take 3-4 business days to dispatch, although this is not guaranteed.
The estimated shipping times that are displayed at checkout are from the point of dispatch.
See our shipping policy for more information.
We have a 30-day return policy, which means you have 30 days after receiving your item(s) to make a return.
For orders created between November 20th 2024 and December 31st 2024, we have extended our normal return period. For orders made between this period, customers have up to 60 days from the receipt of goods to return an item. Please see our Christmas Returns page for more information.
To be eligible for a return of an unwanted item, your item must be in the same condition that you received it and in its original packaging.
In the unfortunate situation that a product is damaged/faulty/incorrect, let us know and we will endeavor to correct any issue as soon as possible.
Please see our refund policy for more information.
Artist: Nakibembe Embaire Group
Label: Nyege Nyege Tapes
Product Type: VINYL LP
UPC: 768558900752
Genre: Dance
In Nakibembe, a small village in Uganda's Busoga kingdom (one of the country's four remaining constitutional monarchies), locals have long reserved a communal area for musical performances and social events. In the middle of this space lies a deep pit that serves a single purpose: to amplify the embaire, an immense xylophone made up of between 15 and 25 wooden keys that stretches across the trench. Log xylophones are common throughout East Africa, but the way the music is played by the Basoga - an Eastern Bantu ethnic group - is specific and unique, with it's own tuning, dances and supplemental instrumentation. Up to eight players can surround the embaire and play simultaneously, overlaying hypnotic polyrhythms while additional members of the ensemble add vocals or play shakers and drums.Nakibembe Embraire Group are one of the last remaining groups that perform with the embaire, and as anyone who's caught their live performances will know, they create a complex and layered wall of sound that's completely transfixing wherever it's presented. The band are a regular fixture at Nyege Nyege festival, and in 2020 appeared in Berlin at the legendary Berghain nightclub alongside Jakarta-based vanguards Gabber Modus Operandi and Harsya Wahono. On the group's debut album, they present five tracks as an ensemble and three tracks in collaboration with Indonesian trio. Heard together the music demonstrates not only the remarkable sound of Nakibembe's own kinetic interaction, but sonic ripples that correlate with more distant forms, from Indonesia's metallophone-led gamelan music to the heady digital processes of the sound art sphere.Undulating eight-minute epic 'Omukazi Iwe Ongeyengula Nguli Zna Ntyo Bwenkola' draws us into the album, offering the perfect introduction to Basoga musical traditions. Triplet-led melodic percussive phrases provide an ever-fluxing backbone, leaving space for call-and-response vocals in Lusoga and shakers for rhythmic clarity. 'Omulangira Mpango' develops the scope even further, pushing up the tempo so the notes and patterns almost blur into clouds of bubbling harmony. It's not difficult to notice how these sounds have seeped into the framework of Western experimental and electronic music, and hearing them presented without corruption only serves to confirm how rare it is to connect with the source. And when Nakibembe do correspond with outside influences, the bond is mutual and synergistic.The group needed to work out a way to combine their techniques with GMO and Wahono's own musical approaches, so they fitted the embaire's keys with audio-to-MIDI triggers that allowed them to capture the instrument's swing without drowning out the sound itself. Then, Nakibembe recorded a series of freestyle performances that would demonstrate the range of the instrument; Wahono and GMO took these recordings and the MIDI data and used digital processes to distort and shift the sounds into dangerous new places, adding vocal improvisations from GMO's Ican Harem. The Indonesian trio wanted to explore a more minimalist approach with Nakibembe, and on '140' do exactly that, slowing down the whirr of embaire clunks to a crawl and adding sporadic squeals and punctuating bumps. '160' is even more unexpected, losing the embaire completely and feeding the raw drum data into synthesizers that pop and squeak with the same unmistakable energy.But it's the final track '133' that really seals the deal, opening on a sober narrative from Ican Harem that addresses the parallels between Indonesian and Ugandan folk traditions before exploding into a trance-like fusion of serpentine polyrhythms and disorienting vocals. Listening to the album is like hearing the past, present and future aligned; dance music is neither static nor bound to it's contemporary apparatus, and conversation rather than colonization can stretch concepts beyond phony borders.
Tracks:
1.1 Omukazi Iwe Ongeyengula Nguli Zna Ntyo Bwenkola
1.2 Omulangira Mpango
1.3 140
1.4 Baligabana
1.5 133
1.6 Bwofuna Sente Opulaninga Ekyina Kuyamba Nga Ngo Kairike
1.7 160
1.8 Abe Nakibembe Mwaye Ga, Embaire
