Vodou Alé
Bongo Joe (38 mins)
Chouk Bwa were a revelation upon their debut album, 2015’s Se Nou Ki La!, a wonderful set of simple but hard-hitting Haitian Vodou religious roots made up of thumping drums and joyous harmonised vocals. Their follow-up takes things in a different direction as they team up with Belgian production duo The Ångströmers.
The result is dark, dirty and dubby. Although impactful, the production work leaves ample space for the Haitians to breathe without threatening to submerge their sound completely. It may be as subtle as the addition of a bubbling, droning underbelly to a song; the best moments come when the focus is rhythmic, the heavy synth beats mixing alongside the Vodou drums.
However, this musical meeting feels less like a hands-on collaboration than a sort of remix project, as if Chouk Bwa did their thing separately before the Ångströmers came in to chop and change and add their electronic flourishes later. As such, there’s a slight distance between performance and production that stops the project short of achieving that sublime cross-cultural connection I’d hoped it would be. Vodou Alé is a little less than the sum of its parts.