We
Julion De'Angelo & Viola Klein
-
We
cat. WE001
release EP + digital
release date 16th of March 2020
mastering Jose Rico & Helmut Erler
distribution Crevette, A-Musik, Honest Jon's

Julion De’Angelo builds his music around Florent Kandety’s voice, which resonates with the Senegalese experience (Kandety was originally featured on Klein's “A Passport And A Visa Stamped By The Holy Ghost”, released on Meakusma in 2018). De’Angelo, who plays and records live percussion, works Kandety’s way of expressing astonishment into a vast environment of arranged beats. His Detroit ambience combines vivid bass-lines on the subs and a patina-like finish, as if from a tape found in the sand while waiting for a bus to Dakar. Afro-Cuban rhythms offer shelter to the delicateness of De’Angelo’s sound constructions. Vulnerability is transformed into wealth. The arrangement becomes a parade moving into the depth, the underground, the basement. Part one, N’aie Pas Peur (Exchange Mix) might be like a triumph in minor heard while going downstairs. Arriving in the deepness, the party is just getting started with part two, Don’t Be Scurred. Mastered by Jose Rico
 
Viola Klein recorded in Saint-Louis, Senegal with the Sabar drummers Abdou Aziz, Abdoukhadre and Adramé Diop. She and the musicians have worked together before. On „Exchange“, released on Meakusma in 2017, the family Diop responded to deep house music, proposed by Whodat and Klein, which slowed the drummers down heavily. This time they release their whole energy, playing Mbalax rhythms. Now the response comes from Whodat and Klein. We (Part One) embraces the drive of the drummers with Klein’s hypnotic chord overtones as well as her bass, with both providing accompaniment to that fearless ride. We (Part Two) is a beat by Whodat in combination with Mbalax. We (Another Part) leaves four to the floor behind and tenderly opens up for the organ’s way of paying attention to what the Sabar drums are saying, becoming a new rhythm included in their polyrhythm, giving glimpses of a futuristic floor. Mastered by Helmut Erler
 
We is published in union by the imprints Ominira, Viola Klein and Meakusma.
 


Pierre-Claver Belleka, known as Dexter dancing in Dakar, Senegal to We (Another Part).
Roy Da 5’5 translates Julion De’Angelo - N’aie Pas Peur (Exchange Mix)





reviews

Meakusma pair the rugged spirit of Viola Klein with mutual soul Julion De’Angelo for a deeply raw but stellar split .
 
Over the past three years Meakusma has been home to Viola Klein’s properly US-rooted style of bluesy, heavily soulful house, so it only makes sense they’ve also got time for the equally ruffcut and soulful burn of North Carolina’s Julion De’Angelo, who cut his teeth with a 12” for Theo Parrish’s Sound Signature in 2017, and a follow-up mix CD last year.
 
De’Angelo takes it from the front with eight minutes of the itchiest, frictional beatdown syncopation, woozy chords and oneiric choral voices in ’N’aie Pas Peur (Exchange Mix)’, next to the scuffed swivel and languorous keys of the ‘Don’t Be Scurred’ variation.
 
Viola Klein beautifully keeps up her end of the bargain in three parts, setting the scene with talking drums and velvet-draped chords in ‘We Part One’, before cutting loose on a wild 150bpm sort of psycho-jit-jazz tip lit up with sampler-punched strings and keys like Omar-S on a mad one with Howard Thomas, while ‘We Another Part’ lets the talking drums go wild against purple-hued chords in a style recalling classic Urban Tribe.
 
BAD!!!
 
https://boomkat.com/