Buraka Som Sistema

Pretty good afro-electro-dance type stuff from Buraka Som Sistema, out today...


Buraka Som Sistema
Komba
(Enchufada)

The Angolan-born, Lisbon-based Afro-dance collective Buraka Som Sistema makes a "day of the dead" style offering of the year's spookiest, butthttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif-shaking-est grooves. Komba, the band's third album, ups the techno factor from 2008's Black Diamond, pushing Buraka's infectious kuduro-samba-house-rave hybrid into shinier, more modernistic directions.

At the same time, though, the band digs deep into tradition, mining Angolan theories of the afterlife. The first song, an insouciantly, body-moving cut called "Eskeleto" concerns a skeleton. The second, "Komba" describes a ritual party held seven days after a person's death, graveside, with singing, dancing, food and drink. A clear highlight, the song rattles with street parade snare cadences, burbles with organs and quick-steps to a better world on chant of "We're setting up the komba, they cry for me, the komba, they dancing at the komba, celebrate my life, the komba." The komba sounds like fun. It's a shame you have to die for it.

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