Nthena by BlackFace Family

The trio of Jah Face, Venom, and, remotely, Twiggy, sounds not only more reflexive ('Lyf' 'Nthena'), at moments even psychoanalytically ('Poison'). New BFF above all expresses extreme emotions of living in postcolony ('Family At Large', 'Fxxk It') and observes the state of the disintegrating world ('Social distance', 'Malawi', 'Politition' 'DRC' about the victims of the civil war in DR Congo). Jah Face and Venom experiment with singing techniques. They use auto-tune not as a voice enhancer but as an instrument for noisy improvisations, combining this with whimpers, moans, and sometimes a polyphonic melody.

This is incrusted into a dense sound substance made from self-produced beats, but also radically remixed fragments of Congolese, Tanzanian, Nigerian and Haitian songs, appreciated in Mzuzu and Blantyre clubs. This is not, however, a postmodern collage, but rather a subversion of the musical fabric that is used by artists to construct coherent and dark-sounding narratives.

"Nthena" means - "that's the way it is" and the phrase is used as an expression of acceptance of the state of affairs. The album, however, does much more. It builds and opens a new musical world out of familiar elements to state: "This is how it will be".