Billy Bao- Lagos Sessions (2016)

Billy Bao- Lagos Sessions (2016)

By: Ghost Writer

 

Billy Bao's fictional bio reminds me of the Mothers of Invention inner lines for their timeless debut, where the band describes Frank Zappa as a mythical creature, a maniac who appeared occasionally at their rehearsals to make them unpredictable, someone like Damo Suzuki, a force of nature.

Billy Bao is a Nigerian misfit, a man who came from Africa to teach the world about brutal music, punk rock turned into a weapon of massive destruction, part Fela Kuti, part Sid Vicious, part Steve Reich, in reality, Billy Bao doesn't exists, he came out of the mind of Spanish avant garde artist Mattin, a guy part punk rocker, part minimalist artist, part anarchist activist, who seem to have taken music to a different place, using noise rock to shake up things in the live improv, minimalist scene, and he has been succeeding, I have been following Mattin's art for almost a decade and the man rarely let me down, as he regularly confronts the listener with a truly intellectual approach in noisy punk rock and experimental high voltage noise.

                             

Mattin or Billy Bao, however you choose to call him take us this time on a tour the force to the streets of Lagos, yes, it’s an imaginary trip but through the intense condensed sound attack and sampling you can feel literally a busy city like the capital of Nigeria, the land of afro beat master Fela Kuti, track A has immediate merciless aural display of sheer aggression, Mattin proves here his value as a master of sound disorientation, in Mattin hands noise becomes alive, gets a personality and almost tell us a story.

Here Mattin leans heavy on African music samples, rolling drums chopped and mixed like a true butcher, he creates chaos, but he commands it with courage, never letting it escape from his will, he let noise transform and mutate into pure sound, using sometimes the high pitched techniques of American master of experimental music Alvin Lucier, and then hitting us with deep, monstrous bass that sounds like coming from our worst nightmares.

B starts with an abrasive display of groovy noise rock with Mattin making a red hot recording of his band for playing a powerfully distorted version of punk rock, there's roaring Stooges like music here in a thrilling ear blasting onslaught that demands to be heard to be believed, but that's just the beginning as Mattin ads chopped and distorted voices to the mix, eerie sound treatments and his trademark highly effective use of extensive silence in in order to increase the tension to almost unbearable levels.

Things go weirder on the almost space tribalistic grooves of C, with heavy doses of bass, spare percussion and call and response chanting, then moving towards parts that resemble High Life with smoking Lagos drums and sax, ending in a beautiful resounding way, almost close to a sort of dangerous dub, the way guys like Wolf Eyes commonly play.

Mattin and his Billy Bao keeps defying sonic preconceptions, making new music, adding wild and exiting elements, like on D, the album closing theme which merges hip hop and noise, showing that while Spain might be in a political dead end alley, musically there are rebels who can't be stopped and keep moving forward no matter what, this is wild and exciting pure thinking man's noise.