Avalanche Kaito describe their sound as avant-rock, but that does no justice at all to the thrilling breadth of sonic invention that they embrace on their second album, Talitakum. Right from the first moments, a bewildering array of influences are on show: opener Borgo sets a frenetic dadaist Afrofuturism against an industrial crunch, creating a series of builds and releases that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Berlin superclub. Kaito Winse’s flutes hit like electric shocks. Traditional African instrumentation pulls against familiar rock and dance structures. Drummer Benjamin Chaval keeps up a relentless, pounding beat, and the whole thing extends outwards into a trancelike realm. It is a gripping and inspired opening salvo.
And things don’t get any less interesting. Shoya is like Frank Zappa going full metal – Nico Gitto’s exploratory guitar lines sound like they are being fed through lead piping or crashing into walls of sheet metal, while a West African chant urges the song to its bullish conclusion. Donle begins with an expressive, wandering drone before Winse’s spoken verses emerge, soon to be backed by warped backing vocals and wobbly organ.
Hailing variously from Burkina Faso, France and Belgium, the trio are currently based in Brussels and credit the freshness of their sound to that city’s diverse culture and acceptance of underground music. Brussels is historically a multilingual city, and there is a corresponding polyglot aspect to the music on Talitakum, in that various musical languages are called upon almost at will, and with regard for the traditional collocations of genre. Where some bands might tease out the threads of their musical influence and present them side by side or one after the other, Avalanche Kaito weave them into tight twists or dense balls: it can feel like the musical equivalent of stepping off a train in a new city and hearing a hundred new languages, smelling the miasma from a dozen unfamiliar food stalls and looking at row upon row of signs bearing words you’ve never seen before. At first, there might be a lack of understanding, but after a while, instinct kicks in, and you abandon yourself to the flow of something big and different.
One great example of this antic multilingualism is Tanvusse. The song began as a sample first heard in Niger, but in its final form, those words are mercilessly bolted to harsh, glitchy studio electronics and abrasive percussion. On Viima – which grows out of a plateau of rumbling synths – the pace slows a little, but the ideas still come thick and fast. At one point, Winse’s voice, soothing but strange, is isolated completely, repeated and layered, before a section of knotty post-rock kicks in, taking the song in an altogether different direction, towards the closest thing to a catchy chorus on the album.
Everything on Talitakum is electrified by a jumpy energy, the source of which can be traced back to how these three musicians seem to exist on the edge of compatibility. Nothing is ever comfortable, and the album is all the better for it. The title track barrels forward on Winse’s confrontational vocals, the guitar grinds out a repeated note, and from nowhere, a flute flutters in and makes itself the song’s primary instrument. Lago provides perhaps Winse’s most impressive vocal performance: his words splatter across the surface of the musical bedrock like a mad rain; his phrasing can recall griot tradition, contemporary metal and even hip hop in a single heartbeat. On the album’s final track, Machine (The Mill), the band dispense entirely with words, creating a harsh post-industrial landscape out of thrums and crashes and electronic blips. Over all of this Winse’s eerie, urgent flute vocalisations take things into a kind of post-punk Magic Band territory.
Talitakum is Exhibit A in the case against organising your record collection by genre. Avalanche Kaito have no interest in categorisation: they allow their flurry of ideas to build up into an ever-changing welter of sound. Their music is like sped-up geological movement, defined by a detailed and often aggressive maximalism, and its international spirit is composed of recognisable local ingredients. Throughout, the fragments pull together in tight cores, resulting in an album that is gripping, uncompromising and constantly engaging.
Talitakum is out on Glitterbeat (12 April 2024)