Peruvian multi-instrumentalist Ale Hop has a knack for unsettling reinventions of musical traditions. On her last album, 2023’s Agua Dulce, she and percussionist Laura Robles reimagined the cajón, electronically processing the instrument’s rhythms with skittering synths and rumbling sub-bass to produce eerie, unpredictable percussion. She returns with Congolese guitarist Titi Bakorta, the pair’s lively debut record delivering a new take on the folk-pop sounds of Congolese soukous.
Characterised by its high-register, dextrous electric guitar rhythms and bright arpeggiated melodies, soukous is generally an uptempo, joyous genre sitting somewhere between Ghanaian highlife and Latin cumbia. Across six tracks, Bakorta captures this effervescence, his spirited guitar-playing ringing with trilling harmony on opening track Bonne Année, lilting through a fast-paced refrain on Así Baila El Sintetizador and twitching through syncopated percussive rhythms on La Danza del Pajarito.
