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Feb 10, 2012Opener 'Halo' finds Albarn at his melancholic best, while 'K-Town' demonstrates a vitality that often seems missing from African music in its WOMAD-friendly guise.
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Jan 3, 2012The combination of the two disparate methods of performance made for quite an extraordinary menagerie of styles that will definitely appeal to hip-hop, art pop and world music fans alike.
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MojoDec 22, 2011It's an uneven ride and not without longuers. [Nov 2011, p.93]
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Q MagazineDec 15, 2011The sound is at once distinctively British and uniquely African, encompassing vivid live field recordings and heavily processed electronica. [Dec. 2001 p. 126]
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Dec 9, 2011In the increasingly prevalent spirit of similar trans-cultural musical interminglings in recent years, what we get never feels carefully curated, explicated, or tamed but rather refreshingly, bewilderingly alive -- an explosive flurry of rhythms, sounds, and voices.
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Nov 10, 2011Kinshasa One Two's myriad of styles and motley participants never cease to criss-cross and collide, sublimely blending earthy tones with sleek production maneuvers to create one of the year's most unique records.
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Nov 7, 2011That such disparate musicians with such massive amounts of tape from the field could put something together this tastefully gives hope that whatever and wherever Albarn decides to operate next, he conducts proceedings in the same considered fashion as he has here.
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Nov 7, 2011The project's brevity certainly explains the lack of coherence over the 14 tracks, although that's not to say there aren't some thrilling individual moments.
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Nov 4, 2011The resulting album is an intriguing mixture of the ancient and contemporary, with every track sounding different: electronica mixes with traditional African styles, reggae with funk and more.
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Nov 3, 2011The most compelling tracks take drastic liberties with the original material, deconstructing Kinshasa sound systems into industrial-tropical hoedowns that reflect postmodern London more than Africa's teeming townships.
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Under The RadarNov 2, 2011As with Albarn's other altruistic ventures, the intention is better than the product. [Oct 2011, p.98]
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Nov 2, 2011The music here definitely works best when this spirit of interaction is at the forefront, with potentially disparate musical ideas serving to complement and enhance each other.
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UncutNov 1, 2011The results are impressive enough, though never totally successful in effecting seamless rapprochement between cultures. [Nov 2011, p.92]
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Oct 24, 2011You finish the record hungry for more of these febrile, insistent Kinshasa sounds--and that, surely, is mission accomplished.
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Oct 20, 2011DRC Music may save the world after all, but they haven't done enough to make this a truly lasting effort.
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Oct 20, 2011Kinshasa One Two is worthwhile both as a cause (all proceeds from sales go to Oxfam) and as an experiment, albeit one that requires some judicious editing to extract the tracks that really count.
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Oct 20, 2011The sole constant is the skeletal, staccato patter of peppery percussion throbbing beneath each track, the everpresent heartbeat of a project in aid of Oxfam.