Tanzanian producer Sisso’s eponymous Dar es Salaam studio represents the cutting edge of the singeli genre. Singeli is hardly underground in Tanzania, but its relentless speeds of over 200 BPM provide ample room for experimentation, and thanks to the efforts of Uganda’s Nyege Nyege label—started by two European expats to chronicle East Africa’s fertile electronic underground—its more extreme exponents have picked up more steam abroad than relatively pop-friendly artists like Msaga Sumu. Records like Bamba Pana’s Poaa, DJ Travella’s Mr. Mixondo or Sisso’s own Mateso showcased the Terminator-tough side of the genre, but Singeli Ya Maajabu, Sisso’s new collaboration with keyboardist Maiko, sounds more like an informal, extremely weird jam session.
Drum-machine loops gallop forward with the momentum of a cursorial prey animal, while gobstopping sounds sketch out simple musical motifs. “Kivinje” opens with a blitz of sirens and horn-honk synths, and it might take a few listens to notice that they’re playing a classic set of chord changes, I-IV-V-IV, the same as rock classics like “Louie Louie” and “Wild Thing.” Later, the duo eschews “musical” cues entirely, enriching the landscape with aqueous effects (“Mizuka”) and bubble noises (“Kazi Ipo”). Maiko’s synth leads ascend to an almost neoclassical beauty, finding new and simple ways to trace familiar chord progressions.
While regional club scenes like singeli are often praised abroad for their supposedly sui generis futurism, Sisso and Maiko draw from a wide palette, maintaining a running conversation with other experimental club scenes. The influence of juke is unmistakable on “Kiboko”; “Mizuka” is a desolate expanse of glass-shard sounds and horror-movie creaks not far removed from Marie Davidson’s “The Tunnel”; and the minute-long “Mangwale” pastes together fluttering choir samples into the album’s only ambient respite. Yet these distinctions tend to vanish beneath the sheer onslaught of the music. Even at a hair shy of 40 minutes, this is a maelstrom of an album, and in an environment devoid of opportunities to go as decisively buck as your typical singeli crowd, listening to Singeli Ya Maajabu might feel like hiking up a mountain through a hailstorm, or maybe playing an N64 game based on Gorguts’ Obscura.
There’s nothing like the almost Charlemagne Palestine-like relentlessness of Bamba Pana’s “Biti Three,” but Singeli Ya Maajabu still requires a high tolerance for treble and abrasion. This is true of much of the most cutting-edge pop music in the last few years, from the blown-out rage-rap on Opium to the mind-boggling breakdowns of Brazilian funk to the chipmunk fantasias of hyperpop. Maybe “annoying” is one of the last frontiers the modern-day listener has to cross to find the world’s most vital music, but then, rock’n’roll sounded like noise to Frank Sinatra. Your parents probably aren’t going to enjoy Singeli Ya Maajabu, but once it teaches you how to listen to it, it twists the brain like nothing else.
