BLNRB: Welcome to the Madhouse

The "madhouse" referenced in this album's title is a townhouse in Nairobi, Kenya, where increasingly frenzied recording activity took place in a pair of makeshift studios in 2009. An interesting mix of artists from Berlin's incredibly fertile electro scene (including Modeselektor, Gebrüder Teichmann, and Jahcoozi) and Kenyan rappers (Nazizi, Mister Abbas, Kimya, Lon'Jon) and singers (Just a Band, Michel Ongaru) participated, and the music is understandably unpredictable, and delightfully inconsistent. Every track brings together a different combination of artists: there's hair-raisingly good rapping from the brilliant female MC Nazizi, in collaboration with Jahcoozi and Mister Abbas; on "Kumbuka," Jahcoozi, Michel Ongaru, and Mister Abbas pool their talents to create churning dubstep combined with African singing and English rapping; "Take It Higher" features music from Jahcoozi and Robo while the lyrics are provided by a rapper named Little King, who sounds like he's about ten years old but raps like a 20-year-old. Jahcoozi and Ukoo Flani create compelling dubstep in 6/8 (which one might have said was impossible) on "Zamaney." There are a couple of less compelling tracks (notably the rather tedious "Ma Bhoom Bhoom Bhoom" by Jahcoozi, Ukoo Flani, and Radi), but even those are really not bad at all -- and everything else is brilliant. ~ Rick Anderson