The second volume of Nyege Nyege's career-spanning DJ Znobia retrospective, 'Inventor Vol. 2' continues the vital story of one of Africa's most influential artists - a producer, singer and DJ who's spent three decades inking his signature onto kuduro and tarraxinha. The label combed through Znobia's vast archives to assemble the four-volume set, picking out the most essential moments from over 700 tracks written between the late 1990s and the mid 2000s; these aren't just the expected dancefloor heaters either, but a sprawling anthology that shines a spotlight on Znobia's innovation and unhinged mastery.
On 'Inventor Vol. 2', Angola-born Sebastião Lopes' light-hearted sense of humor floats visibly to the surface. He samples the viral "Baby T-Pain" YouTube clip and flips it into a hypnotic wail on 'Choro do Corno', offsetting the melodic Auto-Tune layers with his idiosyncratic slowed-down kuduro thuds. Meanwhile, on the chaotic 'Beat Cursor', Znobia raids the Windows sound library, turning eerily familiar error chimes and message alert sirens into percussion that jerks and sways around urgent hand drum rolls and neck-snapping snares. But elsewhere, the magic that led vocal breakouts like 'Marimba' to cult status is thrust into the foreground.
Lopes' slippery, robotic voice curls through syrupy beats and FL Studio-powered electronic harp plucks on 'Sofre', mimics an early Talkbox on the electro-powered 'Dance Da Ma Ju' and shimmers into a soft, romantic coo on 'Monandengue'. Each track highlights the Angolan original's voracious appetite for experimentation, and expresses the parallels between Znobia's kuduro and tarraxinha innovations, and similar future-facing Afro-diasporic moves made in grime, early techno or Brazilian funk. Just check the wheezing synths, haunted flutes and hollow, driving percussion on 'Kuduro ou Hunderground', or the pizzicato blasts and garbled oscillations that shadow Os Bonitos' elastic rhymes on stand-out 'Wo Adji Wo'.
From humble beginnings, learning to mix with just a couple of semba LPs, DJ Znobia took his cues from local traditional sounds and used their groove to power a new musical movement. And with 'Inventor Vol. 2' we're provided with another piece of the puzzle, a sequence of visions that have provided the wider world with modernism, eccentricity and vision. We're still feeling the shockwaves, decades later.
