V/A - Kikommando
Label: PAN / Hakuna Kulala
Cat.No. PAN 124 / HK029
Format: DL / Book
Release Date: 6 August 2021
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Kikommando
Video: bit.ly/3i2EgSg

A collective effort from a vital scene in Kampala, KIKOMMANDO takes its name from Ugandan street food of flat bread and beans. As a ‘food of soldiers’ offering maximum energy for minimum funds, the eponymous mixtape, video series and book project is an equally nourishing and ambitious proposition. It all began in the East African summer of 2018, during a two-month residency at the Nyege Nyege label and collective’s villa, in collaboration with their sublabel Hakuna Kulala. Producer and PAN artist Simone Trabucchi (aka STILL) opened the door to his temporary studio in the city and a crucial cross-cultural collaboration was born.

“The intention was to record as much as possible,” Trabucchi says about KIKOMMANDO’s musical showcase of eight Kampala-based artists, coming from the spectrum of musical influences, crossing trap, drill, cut ups, kuduro, electro, smooth jams—the list goes on. In creating a sonic space to support the expression of its featured singers, poets and emcees, the mixtape ties countless styles and flows into a single snapshot of a particular part of the Kampala music scene, at a particular point in time. The invective of rapper and street legend Blaq Bandana’s “Nkwaata” is laid over a spare and brooding ambient. Kampala Unit trumpet player and first-time singer, Florence, rolls a thick melodic texture through the organic clicks, knocks and atmospherics of “Bae Tasanze”. Jahcity’s unique lyricism combines a personal take on traditional music and soulful-reggae with a jerky, wobbly collection of drops and donks.

Meanwhile, Ecko Bazz applies his grimey vocals and rhythmic, introspective words to lead single ‘Ntabala (Rolex Riddim) at a particularly pertinent moment of self-reflection. “I was trying to listen to the voice inside myself and wanted to achieve a higher level of understanding of things, life,” he says about the themes that he felt inspired to explore with Trabucchi at the recording desk. The accompanying video, shot on a rooftop in the Kampala neighborhood of Ggaba, is one of a series of slick and high-definition films complementing each one of the KIKOMMANDO tracks. These also include contributions from Ugandan emcee and key Hakuna Kulala member Biga Yut, don dada of the GabaGaza gang Swordman Kitala (with Omutaba on percussion) and South Sudanese poet and singer Winnie Lado.

Also accompanying a ‘visual mixtape’ of moving images for each song on KIKOMMANDO is a recording diary of sorts, where Trabucchi compiles a vibrant collection of pictures, colours and textures reflecting the its heterogeneous sonic palette into a book. Together this multifaceted, interdisciplinary project showcases, what Lamin Fofana’s liner notes describe as, “amazing originality, complexity”, while “embracing dissonance”.

Trabucchi’s personal take on a kind of ‘digital dancehall’ defined the sound of his ground-breaking rumination on Italy’s colonial history on debut STILL album, I, in 2017. KIKOMMANDO is a different proposition entirely, where he finds new ways to complement the personality and skills of its contributors sprung from a constant stream of visitors arriving at the Nyege Nyege Villa’s makeshift studio. “It was a dialogue,” stresses Trabucchi, who has always preferred collaboration as a means to escape branded and stereotypical identities, while creating something new. “I created the musical platform to make the singers confident, and challenged them at the same time. Working together accelerates ideas and reveals that nothing is your invention alone. That’s why KIKOMMANDO is a mixtape to me, and not an album.”

The mixtape is mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring artwork by NMR. Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 11 & 12 mixed by Ville Haimala. Tracks 5, 6 & 8 mixed by Lorenzo Dal Ri.

@hakunakulala

V/A - KIKOMMANDO (PAN 124 / HK 029)

V/A - Kikommando
Label: PAN / Hakuna Kulala 
Cat.No. PAN 124 / HK029 
Format: DL / Book
Release Date: 6 August 2021
Purchase: pan.lnk.to/Kikommando
Video: https://bit.ly/3i2EgSg

A collective effort from a vital scene in Kampala, KIKOMMANDO takes its name from Ugandan street food of flat bread and beans. As a ‘food of soldiers’ offering maximum energy for minimum funds, the eponymous mixtape, video series and book project is an equally nourishing and ambitious proposition. It all began in the East African summer of 2018, during a two-month residency at the Nyege Nyege label and collective’s villa, in collaboration with their sublabel Hakuna Kulala. Producer and PAN artist Simone Trabucchi (aka STILL) opened the door to his temporary studio in the city and a crucial cross-cultural collaboration was born.

“The intention was to record as much as possible,” Trabucchi says about KIKOMMANDO’s musical showcase of eight Kampala-based artists, coming from the spectrum of musical influences, crossing trap, drill, cut ups, kuduro, electro, smooth jams—the list goes on. In creating a sonic space to support the expression of its featured singers, poets and emcees, the mixtape ties countless styles and flows into a single snapshot of a particular part of the Kampala music scene, at a particular point in time. The invective of rapper and street legend Blaq Bandana’s “Nkwaata” is laid over a spare and brooding ambient. Kampala Unit trumpet player and first-time singer, Florence, rolls a thick melodic texture through the organic clicks, knocks and atmospherics of “Bae Tasanze”. Jahcity’s unique lyricism combines a personal take on traditional music and soulful-reggae with a jerky, wobbly collection of drops and donks.

Meanwhile, Ecko Bazz applies his grimey vocals and rhythmic, introspective words to lead single ‘Ntabala (Rolex Riddim) at a particularly pertinent moment of self-reflection. “I was trying to listen to the voice inside myself and wanted to achieve a higher level of understanding of things, life,” he says about the themes that he felt inspired to explore with Trabucchi at the recording desk. The accompanying video, shot on a rooftop in the Kampala neighborhood of Ggaba, is one of a series of slick and high-definition films complementing each one of the KIKOMMANDO tracks. These also include contributions from Ugandan emcee and key Hakuna Kulala member Biga Yut, don dada of the GabaGaza gang Swordman Kitala (with Omutaba on percussion) and South Sudanese poet and singer Winnie Lado.

Also accompanying a ‘visual mixtape’ of moving images for each song on KIKOMMANDO is a recording diary of sorts, where Trabucchi compiles a vibrant collection of pictures, colours and textures reflecting the its heterogeneous sonic palette into a book. Together this multifaceted, interdisciplinary project showcases, what Lamin Fofana’s liner notes describe as, “amazing originality, complexity”, while “embracing dissonance”.

Trabucchi’s personal take on a kind of ‘digital dancehall’ defined the sound of his ground-breaking rumination on Italy’s colonial history on debut STILL album, I, in 2017. KIKOMMANDO is a different proposition entirely, where he finds new ways to complement the personality and skills of its contributors sprung from a constant stream of visitors arriving at the Nyege Nyege Villa’s makeshift studio. “It was a dialogue,” stresses Trabucchi, who has always preferred collaboration as a means to escape branded and stereotypical identities, while creating something new. “I created the musical platform to make the singers confident, and challenged them at the same time. Working together accelerates ideas and reveals that nothing is your invention alone. That’s why KIKOMMANDO is a mixtape to me, and not an album.”

The mixtape is mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring artwork by NMR. Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 11 & 12 mixed by Ville Haimala. Tracks 5, 6 & 8 mixed by Lorenzo Dal Ri.

@hakunakulala

KIKOMMANDO

STILL, ECKO BAZZ - Ntabala (Rolex Riddim) (PAN 124 / HK029)

STILL, Blaq Bandana - Nkwaata (PAN 124 / HK029)

STILL, Swordman Kitala - Rollacosta feat. Omutaba (PAN 124 / HK029)

STILL, Biga Yut, Florence - Ntwala (PAN 124 / HK029)

STILL, Biga Yut - Tukoona Nalo (PAN 124 / HK029)

STILL, Florence - Bae Tasanze (PAN 124 / HK029)

Bill Kouligas is the mind behind one of modern electronic music's greatest and most innovative labels, PAN. His remarkable ear for music meant that he released some of the earliest records from luminaries like Yves Tumor, Helena Hauff and Eartheater, helping to jumpstart several remarkable careers. And each PAN release is lovingly and lavishly packaged like an art object in itself, an approach you can read more about in this month's feature-length cover story.

The Berlin artist's RA Podcast is an audio companion to that cover story, and it underlines not only Kouligas's range as a label A&R but also as a DJ. Reflecting the label's evolution from straight-up noise to musique concréte to leftfield dance music and then avant-pop, the mix cycles through stages of strange, staggered beats, almost celestial ambient music, passages of overwhelming noise and sound that sublimate into floating clouds before solidifying back into club music, and a couple engaging spoken word passages and endless manipulations of the human voice. In other words, it sounds a lot like PAN.

@pan_hq

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/880

RA podcast

RA.880 Bill Kouligas

Carrier Bag Music is a new series of sonic fictions inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. Reimagining the mixtape as container, medicine bundle and chronometer telling the time on another world, artists and producers explore Le Guin's articulations of holding, gathering and caring. With Laurel Halo, Elysia Crampton, Jenna Sutela and Victoria Sin.

Week Two: Elysia Crampton Chuquimia
 
“A medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.” — Ursula K. Le Guin
 
For the second episode of Carrier Bag Music, Elysia Crampton Chuquimia responds to the concept, image and process of the medicine bundle — a collection of sacred items with spiritual significance, held in a special carrier, in Indigenous American cultures. Spanning over seventeen years of the artist's life, this episode comprises original music and edits by the artist and includes the premiere of a previously unreleased track ‘Stars Over Riparian Corridor’ and features music released under the artist's Jaqi name, Chuquimamani-Condori — the name given to her as a form of honour and recognition from the elders of her nation.
 
Elysia Crampton Chuquimia is an American artist and musician belonging to the Pakajaqi Aymara nation. Her eclectic music is the flashpoint of myriad influences opening upon the complexity of Aymara becoming. Underscored by radical and queer politics and touching upon themes of science fiction, faith and ontology, Crampton’s experimental work gives sonorous form to contemporary expressions of Aymara resistance and survival: a project of 'becoming-with', in the shades given this term by Donna Haraway via prison abolitionist Che Gossett. 
 
“Although it’s possible to contextualise Crampton’s work among that of her contemporaries, hers is a truly singular style…she’s able to synthesize numerous musical forms, crashing timbres, dense percussion, mauled samples, pretty synth lines, club music structures dismantled from within, and much more, into bold music rich with purpose and feeling.” — The Wire
 
Curated by Ignota in partnership with Camden Art Centre and Haus Kulturen der Welt.

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction is published by Ignota with an Introduction by Donna Haraway and Images by Lee Bul https://ignota.org/products/the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction

Carrier Bag Music: Elysia Crampton

Carrier Bag Music is a new series of sonic fictions inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. Reimagining the mixtape as container, medicine bundle and chronometer telling the time on another world, artists and producers explore Le Guin's articulations of holding, gathering and caring. With Laurel Halo, Elysia Crampton, Jenna Sutela and Victoria Sin.

Week Three: Jenna Sutela
 
The third episode of Carrier Bag Music by Jenna Sutela is a mixed bag of sounds and music by humans and non-humans. A proposal for interspecies symbiosis, this otherworldly mix gathers collaborators including slime mould, space bacteria, artificial intelligence and yeast cells.
 
“Mine is a mixed bag, containing original material from Many-Headed Reading (2016), Nam-Gut (the microbial breakdown of language) (2017), Holobiont (2018), nimiia seance (2019) and nnother (2020), with Elvia Wilk, as well as some music from my desktop: Most Holy Redeemer by Ocarina Orchestra; Guts theme from Berserk by Susumu Hirasawa; Oração (Pense & Dance) by Lechuga Zafiro Ft. Linn da Quebrada; Finnish lullaby Nuku Nuku; Amniotic Life by Tomoko Sauvage; Exit by Bendik Giske; and Arca from @@@@@. Voices by Jessica Edwards, Clara Jo, Emily Jones, Ming Lin, Colin Self, and yeast cells sonified by Jim Gimzewski at 22, 26 and 30 Celsius.” — Jenna Sutela
 
“Go on, say I, wandering off towards the wild oats, with Oo Oo in the sling and little Oom carrying the basket.” — Ursula K. Le Guin
 
“I evolved as a vessel for others to proliferate. Bacteria, babies. Germs, parasites. Both organic and synthetic. Love and want. Not merely eye to eye, but eye to mouth, mouth to ear.” — Jenna Sutela and Elvia Wilk: nnother, 2020
 
Jenna Sutela works with words, sounds, and other living media, such as Bacillus subtilis nattō bacteria and the “many-headed” slime mold Physarum polycephalum. Her audiovisual pieces, sculptures, and performances seek to identify and react to precarious social and material moments, often in relation to technology. Sutela's work has been presented at museums and art contexts internationally, including Guggenheim Bilbao, Moderna Museet, and Serpentine Galleries. She is a Visiting Artist at The MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) in 2019-20.

Curated by Ignota in partnership with Camden Art Centre and Haus Kulturen der Welt. Carrier Bag Music is part of Carrier Bag Fictions, a project by HKW and Ignota.

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction is published by Ignota with an Introduction by Donna Haraway and Images by Lee Bul https://ignota.org/blogs/news/carrier-bag-music

Carrier Bag Music: Jenna Sutela

Label based in Berlin, est. 2008. http://www.p-a-n.org

STILL, Florence - Bae Tasanze (PAN 124 / HK029)

PAN

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