News

Burkina Electric Receives Glowing Review in NY Times, Featured on KCRW, Touring US and Europe

January 14, 2010

This past November, those in the New York City area might have seen Itutu at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival. An "unabashedly festive fusion of dance and live music," the show featured Karole Armitage's dance troupe Armitage Gone! Dance in a collaboration with the transcontinental band Burkina Electric. For many, the show also served as an introduction to Burkina Electric, a band known for mixing the traditional rhythms of its native Burkina Faso with club/electronic music.

This week, Burkina Electric released their debut album, titled Paspanga, on Cantaloupe. Two days before the release, the New York Times got a hold of a copy and printed an extremely positive review. Nate Chinen, referencing the group's multi-national background and sound, had this to say about the album:

The West African interior meets the jet stream, and the digital slipstream, on "Paspanga," the full-length debut by Burkina Electric. A sleek, kinetic album, it documents a continuing project spanning several continents, with members based in Burkina Faso, Germany and New York. Whatever awkward dislocations that might suggest, they're nowhere to be found in the music, which imagines a global dance floor.

For northern-hemisphere listeners, Lukas Ligeti is the album's marquee name: son of the modernist classical composer Gyorgy Ligeti, he's a known entity in new-music circles, a dynamic percussionist and conceptualist. In Burkina Electric, which officially formed a few years ago, he plays beat maker, sharing the role with the electronics artist known as Pyrolator. Their tandem gives the group some scaffolding, and a lot of its surface texture.

But in practical terms, and almost surely by design, Pyrolator and Mr. Ligeti end up taking a back seat on "Paspanga." The spotlight lands instead on Mai Lingani, a vocalist of irrepressible energy and unwavering self-assurance. Singing (or shouting) in a handful of languages, she galvanizes...on "To Mi To Zi," built on a squawky electronic vamp, and "Naab Koobo."

The nice review was followed by a spot on KCRW's Today's Top Tune. "Ligdi" was the featured song and, though the review was short ("a song about money and all of its most negative aspects"), KCRW provided streaming audio of the song.

All of this buzz fortunately precedes a slew of tour dates in February, including Chicago (2/17), the Mile High Voltage Festival in Denver (2/19), Belgium (2/23), and Germany (2/26, 2/27). For a full listing of dates, including venues and links to purchase tickets, visit Burkina's artist page.

Paspanga is available at the Bang on a Can Store.