Celtic Connections

Konono No 1, O2 ABC, Glasgow

Keith Bruce

four stars

Due to weather-related travel difficulties for billed support, Tuareg guitarist Bombino and his band, the running order of this show was swapped, perhaps to what seemed a more obvious order, given the slick and stylish presentation of the Niger fretsman and his cohorts, and their boast of an album, Nomad, produced by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. But the Westernised sound of Bombino was tame stuff by comparison with the elemental ferocity of Congolese quintet Konono No1, and the uninformed who arrived later were left kicking themselves for missing some of a mesmeric set - radical music from a nation most people know best as a war zone.

It took Western pop and rock a generation to arrive at the junkyard steampunk orchestra of Tom Waits' Swordfishtrombones. Konono arrived ealier at an adjacent platform by their own route, fitting mbira (thumb pianos) with pick-ups and driving them through guitar amps with drum kit, congas and cowbells providing the rhythm, and four of the band adding vocals - the whole mix then served up through metal horn speakers on stands. The sole female in the line-up alternated her metronomic cowbell rhythm - the snare-drum player in Ravel's Balero has nothing on her, and doesn't sing at the same time - with some crowd-encouraging dance-moves that included a fine version of what we might identify as twerking, but with way more sass than Miley has.

If Kraftwerk had not been around to have their electronic pulse grafted on to hip hop for the club dancefloor, we would have had to wait until this band reached our ears. The Third World influence on the minimalists is in there as well. When Konono No1 play, it is not a party to come late to.