7. Various ArtistsMusique Du Burundi

This is a great record that maybe Bill Nace turned me onto. He’s turned me on to a whole bunch of stuff. There’s an inanga on there, a harp type thing, and there’s these whisper vocals with it. It’s not an upright bass, but it reminded me of William Parker, the tone of it, the note choices. Obviously, William Parker’s playing is incredibly impressive. But my first takeaway was that it’s incredibly moving. This is a different kind of impressive because it’s like, ‘what is that? What’s making that sound? How is that built? How do I get closer to that world?’ With me stretching a string over the drum, this was definitely an influence. This little string thing that I was building was so much more limited but can hopefully do other things. And then there’s ‘Chants De Femmes’, two young girls and they’re doing this amazing vocal thing where they trade off the line really, really fast. And it sounds weirdly like tape cut up music because it’s so startling. So, there are some things about this record that I’d never heard, or they were connected to the things I liked, but it was in this part of the world that I’d never been to. It’s a really incredible record for that.