The Owiny Sigoma Band are set to releas their second album, Power Punch, via Brownswood Recordings on April 8 – have a listen to LP track ‘Owiny Techno’ below:
For the second album, the band, comprising Nairobians Joseph Nyamungu and Charles Owoko and Londoners Jesse and Louis Hackett, Sam Lewis, Chris Morphitis and Tom Skinner recorded in the UK, having cut the first record, 2011’s self-titled LP, in east Africa. With the relocation has come a whole raft of new sonic textures, with electronic genres – like the name-checked techno here – and South African Shangaan electro making an imprint on the album.
‘Owiny Techno’ opens with Nyamungu’s Nyatiti seeking out a spacious melodic line, before the rhythm – previously submerged – gets forefronted, a relentless surge forward, overlaid with both scattered electronic beats and Owoko’s nyiduonge drums. It lets up occasionally to usher in scrambled synth and acid bass lines, all the time knitted together by chanted vocals, making for a brilliant cut from an album that will most certainly be essential listening.
