Konono No. 1, live at Momo’s Bar, London, Wednesday 5th April

I’ve been a fan of Congolese Afrofreakbeat champs Konono No. 1 since those first enticingly lo-res Quicktime vids first started showing up on the internet. Watching the footage of them playing their jerry-rigged thumb pianos and reclaimed-metal percussion in the streets of Kinshasa, the idea that they’d ever be playing a free show in the 'fashionable' basement bar of a London restaurant seemed unlikely. So I was excited when, whilst doing my habitual work avoiding morning internet scan, I read that they were doing just that for their debut UK show. “We advise anyone attending to arrive early…” said the info, so I chucked a load of vile fast food down my face after work and arrived twenty-five minutes after the doors opened. Plenty of time considering that, at that point, there were only thirty-three people in a ninety capacity venue, except that the venue manager had been keeping an impromptu guest list of people who’d rang about the show and this list was already over capacity. He told me to come back in an hour and a half and I might be able to squeeze in. I went and sat in a crappy pub nearby—the type of place that’s full of transient post-work businessmen swilling a couple of pints back before getting the train home—and nursed a Fosters whilst composing on a piece of scrap paper an irritable weblog post about contradictory information. It was a miserable pint, sitting and waiting for what seemed an inevitable early train ride home. I wandered back to Momo’s and stood at the front of the twenty or so waiting outside and, amazingly, got let in. I looked at the doorman’s clicker, which said that I was the 103rd person to be heading downstairs.

The bar was decorated to try to look like Morocco, except that it didn’t really but then neither does most of Morocco anyway, so that was OK. The place was packed out like a rush hour underground train. You could have fallen asleep and stayed standing up. The crowd wasn’t like that at any other ‘world music’ event that I’d been to (reader: disregard that I haven’t been to any and concentrate on stereotypes), instead it was mainly young, well scrubbed and well dressed. Lotsa girls that looked like they’d probably had ponies when they were kids and no-one wearing any band t-shirts except me (Electric Wizard, motherfucker). I now know that there were a couple of the Dissensus posse there and it would have been good if I could have met up with them as I was on my own.

When Konono No 1 came on the crowd started hooting and clapping. There’d been reports from some of Konono’s initial US dates that they’d sounded too polite, unamped and undistorted, and if they’d come out with a sound like a wet fart it would have been really embarrassing but they blasted out loud and thick. The thumb pianos seemed to be going through tiny practice amps that were distorting to the point of break up; the dual male and female vocals were channelled through the bands lance-voix—reclaimed colonial-era megaphone speakers. Unlike in the US where these were just for show they really did seem to be miked up. It sounded pretty much exactly like the Congotronics CD, except for the drummer who was extremely high in the mix and constantly flamming away on a single snare drum giving the proceedings Stars on 45/Jive Bunny feel but that was good because I like Stars on 45 (fuck that scab Jive Bunny.) Songs played endlessly, super-tight and ever forward in perpetual motion with seemingly no effort from the band. They were like a train rolling down a hill. I’d lose track of time and wouldn’t know whether a song had been twisting and writhing for eight minutes or sixteen minutes or twenty-four minutes. During the encore (“Konono, you must play and never stop,” shouted one young colonialist) there was a welcome rhythm change to a slightly more relaxed kinda-claves rhythm before it built up again.

As should be expected for a band that have been playing together for over twenty years they were total pro’s—as good live at their thing as The Ramones or Status Quo. They knew how to get people moving and to get sweat in the air (it got pretty stinky—I surreptitiously checked my pits and it wasn’t me.) I think that they might have even played their songs in the same order as the album.

On the way back I almost got into a fight with two young bankers who didn’t understand tube escalator etiquette. That’s how a night seeing Konono should end.

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And I may as well link to my review of the Congotronics 2 CD again.