Peder Mannerfelt enters the Congo

The Swedish artist will release an album on Archives Intérieures inspired by European colonialism in Africa.

In last year’s interview with Peder Mannerfelt, the Swede first revealed to us the potential of releasing some material on Yves De May and Peter Van Hoesen’s Archives Intérieures label. “It’s really concept driven,” Mannerfelt said, “I see it as a research piece and it helped me with the direction I’m working in now, so it kind of pre-dates everything else I have been doing.”  Following Archives Intérieures albums by De Mey, Sendai and John Elliott’s most recent The Path Of Spectrolite as Imaginary Softwoods, Mannerfelt will deliver an astonishing 24-track long player called The Swedish Congo Record. An album said to be inspired by the Belgian Congo of the 1930s, news of The Swedish Congo Record brings to mind Joseph Conrad’s seminal 1899 book The Heart Of Darkness, later adapted to film in Apocalypse Now.

As a press release writes, The Swedish Congo Record is an unintentional critique on Western European colonialist history inspired by Armand Denis, a Belgian filmmaker said to be one of the first Europeans to capture sounds of central Congo. His discoveries were later given a 1950 release as The Belgian Congo Records, and the idea behind Mannerfelt’s conceptually driven project was said to first use the original album as a sample source. However the modular handyman furthered his approach by recreating the sounds using synthesizers, paying tribute to the traditional and folkloric meaning of the dance “by re-sculpting the album, reshaping its original musicality into a wild electronic universe of his own.”

Archives Intérieures will release The Swedish Congo Record by Peder Mannerfelt on May 4.

Tracklisting:

1. Bapere Dance
2. Bahuto Chant & Dances 1
3. Batwa Pigmy Dance 2
4. Royal Watusi Drums 3
5. Batwa Pigmy Dance 1
6. Omande
7. Xylophone at Lubero
8. Mambuti Pigmy Flutes
9. Batwa Pigmy Dance 3
10. Chief Karumi´s Dance
11. The Ceremonial Drums of Chief Kokonyange
12. Elephant Feast
13. Royal Watusi Drums 1
14. Pigmy´s of Kigali
15. Flagellation
16. Circumcision Dance
17. Kokonyange´s Dance
18. Humming
19. Bahuto Chant & Dances 2
20. Circumcision Atmosphere
21. Bahuto Chant & Dances 3
22. The Circumcision Bird
23. Stick Orchetstra
24. Royal Watusi Drums 2