Kinshasa isn’t the kind of city that waits for you to be ready, the city just takes over your experience. It is a metropolis of staggering contradictions, where the ghosts of Belgian colonialism collide with the relentless, vibrating hustle of hyper-capitalism. To attempt to capture the essence of this place on tape seems like a fool’s errand, yet this is exactly what the Kinshasa-based street art collective KINACT have achieved with their debut LP, Kinshasa in Action. Founded in 2015 by Eddy Ekete, KinAct first made their name not on stage, but in the gutters, markets, and intersections of the Congolese capital. They transformed public spaces into living, breathing theatres of the absurd, constructing elaborate regalia from the city’s discarded detritus, bottles, wires, tires, and dismembered dolls. Theirs was a visual language of survival, bearing witness to rampant pollution, gendered violence, and postcolonial scars. Now, released via the essential incubator of African avant-garde music, Nyege Nyege Tapes, the collective has successfully collapsed their visual rituals into an auditory assault, proving that the tools of making can seamlessly double as weapons of rhythm.
The genesis of this auditory translation occurred in 2022, when a core group of KinAct members travelled to Kampala for a two-month residency at Nyege Villa. For a collective whose entire identity was predicated on the kinetic energy of street processions and visual shock tactics, entering a traditional recording studio could have been a sterilizing experience. Instead, led by Ekete, they actively corrupted the space. They turned the pristine Nyege studio into a makeshift, scrap-metal workshop. Costumes were dismantled and repurposed as percussion; power tools, drills, circular saws, hammers, and nails, were violently integrated with homemade xylophones and improvised drums. The resulting body of work is inextricably welded to the Congolese scenes. It is shockingly contemporary, yet it vibrates with an ancient political significance that interrogates the future of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the wider continent. It is the sound of a society’s refuse being hammered into something transcendent.
To truly grasp the weight of Kinshasa in Action, one must understand the sculptured beings who perform it. The members of KinAct operate less as a traditional band and more as a pantheon of mythic avatars, each embodying a specific facet of urban decay and spiritual resilience. There is Falonne Mambu, known as La Femme Électrique, crackling with a defiant voltage; Athou Molimo Bongonda, or Spiritus, the ancestral bell-ringer who anchors the chaos; and Pape Noire as L’Homme Pneu, dragging the heavy, suffocating weight of rubber and industry. They are joined by Dudamwanza’s L’Homme Poubelle (Trash Man), Patrick Kitete’s L’Homme Miroir (Mirror Man), and Bestaguy Bayoka’s Coco Man or Sachet Man. At the helm is Ekete himself as Homme Cannette, a tin-can deity rattling against the void. Every artist contributes their own localized distinct matter, effectively turning the album into a Frankensteinian organism where the sum is as terrifying and beautiful as its parts.
The record opens with a deceptive and deeply rooted invocation. ‘Musique du Congo’ (which translates, quite literally, to “Music of the Congo”), is a title that historically refers to the smooth, popular rumba and soukous genres originating from the DRC. Yet, KinAct immediately subverts this expectation. Instead of a lilting guitar melody, we are presented with a short, traditional, and distinctly eerie musical chorus. Mambu’s voice haunts the track, chanting the title phrase over a bed of swirling, dread-soaked synths. It sounds less like an introduction and more like a warning, a spectral transmission from a forgotten era. This fragile atmosphere is immediately and violently shattered by ‘Cercle de Tambour KinAct avec Manza’. Here, the collective drags the listener by the collar into the dirt. It is a wildly aggravating and deliberately confrontational percussion performance. Local drums and homemade xylophones clatter against each other in a frantic, unyielding rhythm. The industrial-strength staccato beats collide with undulating xenharmonic flute blasts, creating a snapping, claustrophobic polyrhythm that refuses to let you catch your breath.
As the album progresses, the distinction between musical instrument and construction equipment entirely disintegrates. On ‘Atelier KinAct’ (“KinAct Workshop”), the whirring of power drills is pitch-shifted and manipulated over a foundation of hollow, plasticky drums, creating a sense of frantic, mechanical labour. It is the sound of a city constantly building and unbuilding itself in real-time. This industrial clang reaches a terrifying zenith on ‘Gaingai’. Here, the collective’s circular saw is elevated from a mere prop to the driving rhythmic force of the track. Its metallic, high-frequency whine spirals aggressively around a jerky, percussive thump, carving a deep, jagged groove into the stereo field. If Einstürzende Neubauten sought to deconstruct the European factory, KinAct is attempting to build a spaceship out of an African scrapyard. Yet, for all its avant-garde noise, the music never loses its connection to the street heat and humid night air of Kinshasa.
The structural heart of the album lies in the various iterations of the ‘Cercle de Tambour’ (“Drum Circle”). These tracks, whether stripped down or augmented by collaborators like Manza and Ikembe, serve as the ritualistic core of the record. ‘Cercle de Tambour KinAct’ takes rusted, uneven polyrhythms and spins them into dizzying psychedelic spirals. Syncopated sub-bass pulses are routinely corrupted by the sharp, undeniable crack of sheet metal being struck. Explosive knocks and hoarse, guttural incantations rise from the mix, invoking the dread-soaked voodoo minimalism of African Head Charge while channeling the heavily distorted, amplification-pushed aesthetic pioneered by their compatriots, Konono No.1. However, KinAct’s approach feels significantly looser and more dangerous, existing in a liminal space somewhere between a sweaty basement dancefloor, a heavy machinery factory, and a midnight street procession that you might be warned to avoid.
The back half of the record descends fully into the shadows. ‘La Marche Inévitable’ (“The Inevitable March”) trudges forward with a doom-laden gravity, a slow-moving procession of clanking metal and dragging feet that feels heavy with the historical burdens the collective so often references in their visual art. This bleeds seamlessly into ‘Kinshasa La Nuit’, a track that attempts to capture the sensory overload of the capital after dark. Discarded pill packets, plastic bags, and bamboo sticks rustle and snap beneath the roar of distant motorcycle engines, creating a nocturnal trance that is equally alluring and terrifying. It is here that ‘Femme Électronique’ asserts her full presence, a track that buzzes with raw, uninsulated energy, tying the album’s thematic threads of feminine resilience and electronic superstition into a tight, abrasive knot.
By the time the album reaches its conclusion with ‘Les Cloches (Spiritus’ Invocation)’, the listener has been thoroughly bruised and recalibrated. Spiritus takes the lead, ringing ancestral bells that cut through the lingering industrial smog like a clarion call. It is a moment of profound spiritual clarity at the end of a deeply chaotic journey. Across these 11 tracks, KinAct have not merely recorded an album; they have manifested a scorched suite of industrial Congolese percussion. Kinshasa in Action is a staggering, physically demanding achievement, interlocking the brutalist reality of hammers, saws, and motorcycle engines with the transcendent power of raw chants and communal drum circles. It is an essential new chapter in African music that proves the most vital sounds often rise from the very things the world has chosen to throw away.
