Sounding like five bands playing at once, Zun Zun Egui follow their hyperactive 2011 debut Katang by letting us know they thought it simply wasn’t hyperactive enough.
Shackles Gift further fuses – or hurls against each other – free jazz, Afrobeat, no wave and countless other genres, and emerges with music that’s uncategorisable, sometimes exhausting and often thrilling. You may glimpse flashes of Beefheart, Talking Heads or Gang Of Four, but its worldview is genuinely global. Perhaps past West Country mavericks like Rip Rig & Panic or The Pop Group are still putting something in the water there. More likely, Mauritian singer-guitarist Kushal Gaya taking the band to play in that African island nation last year has added sega and reggae to the post-rock platform. Gaya sings in many languages, some made up, to complement the frenetic, peripatetic feel. If this sounds daunting, after an acclimatisation period your ears start to understand the rhythms and squalls; their logic, their directions. Zun Zun Egui are fiercely original and bold, from the jabbing, stabbing African Tree to the mesmeric loping guitar-funk of I Want You To Know. Coming into focus.
