01. Borgo (08:48)
02. Shoya (03:45)
03. Donle (05:23)
04. Tanvusse (02:58)
05. Viima (07:55)
06. Talitakum (03:18)
07. Ghostdrum exp3 (00:51)
08. Lago (04:53)
09. Machine (The Mill) (04:18)

Avalanche Kaito: the exhilarating combination of Burkina Faso born urban griot Kaito Winse and fellow experimentalists Belgian guitarist Nico Gitto and French drummer/producer Benjamin Chaval. This transnational avant-rock trio created waves with their visceral self-titled 2022 debut, bagging notable festival appearances (Supersonic, End of the Road), a KEXP session and much deserved critical and audience enthusiasm.

Their new album Talitakum, is deeper and more sonically varied, revealing an energy and spiritual weight that has undoubtedly emerged from the group’s incessant touring. The live shows are indeed revelatory, twisting and turning with an unexpected intensity and collectiveness. It is a arresting, shapeshifting sound that spins freely from ancient griot traditions to full-throttle thrash (with many stops in between).

Polyrhythmic futurism, raw epiphanies, Burkinabe parables.
A rattling ritual of ecstatic noise.

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Jeff Nuttall’s 1968 polemic, Bomb Culture, lauds Dadaist Tristan Tzara as a main inspiration for the (atomic) countercultures of the 1950s and 1960s. According to Nuttall, Tzara ripped up the mores of the art world to invoke a new “cosmic identity” where “all things are seen as the part of the whole of existence and the whole is expressed in every part”. Things could now appear “as matter in cosmic terms,” and work as a “wonderful, rather than useful entity.” Both these ideas of deconstruction and reevaluation into new cosmic matter, however wildly expressed by the hedonistic Nuttall, mirror the music of transnational avant-rock trio, Avalanche Kaito. Avalanche Kaito are “driven by the desire for something new,” and see their own energies “as a show.” Their maelstrom of cosmic sound continually refocuses and reframes itself to an often startled audience, like fast-moving scenes on a cinema screen.

Another, less cosmic, link is worth noting. An unglamorous and often irascible man, Jeff Nuttall worked his countercultural magic from the provinces and on the more mundane fringes of swinging London. Similarly, one cannot help but see the businesslike Brussels as anything but exciting. But currently, the city is a magnet for many creative communities looking to reshape the world through new ideas and practices. Like Avalanche Kaito, who met there and used it as the base to develop their remarkable “borderland” music, a sound which suits a city where new socio-cultural forms emerge from previously unseen interzones.

According to drummer Benjamin Chaval, their music comes from “a sound, a sample, a desire, a feeling, or simply a lack of something.” And their second album, Talitakum, is the result of a Tzara-esque process, where “the whole” is, indeed, “expressed in every part.” whatever the provenance. To begin with, the band gigged as much as they could in 2021, the guitarist Nicco Gitto having replaced bassist Arnaud Paquotte, their fiery, mercurial shows becoming “a laboratory” in their own right. 2023 brought two creative residencies; where eight new pieces were sketched out. In July of that year the “aural puzzle” was recorded by Vincent Poujol at the Gam studio in the Belgian Ardennes. In contrast to what went before, there were no plans to rely on live recording, and overdubs were used extensively. Even so, the tracks were still very fresh, sometimes even non-existent: the track ‘Tanvusse’ began in the studio as a sample first heard in Niger. Other tracks like ‘Lago’ were brought to rehearsal as thoughtforms in the singer Kaito Winse’s head. Later, Benjamin Chaval assembled, arranged and further produced a body of work “that had to be tamed and reinvented” in concert.

Listening to Talitakum, one could be forgiven for thinking further about Tzara’s ideas; how do we really communicate with each other and what is the most effective way to do so? It’s a question that can hopefully never be fully answered. But we can note the new record’s title, Talitakum, means “Dead, come back to life!” (in Moore). Are the band unwittingly channeling the likes of Tzara and other old artists? Kaito Winse sometimes talks about his ancestors being there with him when he sings.

First impressions are driven by the different fusions thrown up between polyrhythms and polyphony: a notion of the constant reassembling of various musical building blocks. The opener ‘Borgo’ has a dissonant tone to it. Two minutes in and it’s by no means certain who will win out in this musical tug of war between voice, beat and instruments. All elements seem to burn themselves out eventually, living off the warmth of the energy created by their fight in a long meditative tail out.

The tracks on the album are informed by Kaito Winse’s voice and his use of a traditional flute and mouth bow. All three elements work, sometimes in tandem, as wider ciphers for communication, or “emotive” forms of mystification that inspire and unsettle. Throughout, Winse demonstrates what untapped powers many of us command, bodily; if only we knew how to use them. Alongside Winse, Nico Gitto (guitar) and Benjamin Chaval (drums, synths and electronics) work like mechanics, adding and updating elements to suit.

Winse’s streams of consciousness can dominate, and on tracks like ‘Lago’ and ‘Tanvusse’ it feels as if the music has been left to set the coordinates mapped out by the torrent of words and expressions. The listener does get some mental space – ‘Viima’ (which means Life in Moore) is a soothing if mysterious number. ‘Donle’ is on a similar journey to somewhere inside ourselves, and colored by some queasy organ sounds that could come from an early Tangerine Dream record. On the title track ‘Talitakum’ – possibly the most recognizable song (if we talk about traditional structures) we experience a question and answer session in quick time between vocals and instruments. Even so, the sound is soon broken up and redirected by Winse’s flute playing. ‘Lago’ throws up a lot of sonic bricolage that manages to work alongside a pulsating polyrhythmic beat.

In uncertain times artists embrace elements of chaos to reflect or react to what goes on in the world around them, creating other spaces that can give others relief. Talitakum is very much in this mold. Restless, sometimes discombobulating, it still manages to make sense and give succour. Tracks like ‘Shoya’ hop around, throwing out little passages of sound that can be digested separately, in nuggets. Their music also seems to answer questions for itself without any recourse to the listener, which can be a very refreshing thing to hear. In that way it feels like listening to Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica. Last track ‘Machine (The Mill)’ is aptly named; this restless cut grinds out its message as an instrumental, one that comes at the listener from various start points. It could be an aural metaphor for the band’s music. Does Winse try to talk through his flute here? Maybe thinking that’s what is happening is enough. It should be clear by now that Talitakum is a shapeshifting, incredible record. 

01. Sunguru (02:40)
02. Lebere (02:58)
03. Douaga (05:31)
04. Goomde (05:10)
05. Bow (03:47)
06. Eya (10:35)
07. Toulele (03:34)
08. Le Grand-Père (06:38)

“They are as their name suggests, an act who strike unexpectedly. And they are sensational…an enervating wall of noise given a focus by the incredible presence of singer, the Burkina Faso griot, Kaito Winse. The best kind of buzz.” — Louder Than War

Avalanche Kaito:
A Burkinabe urban griot (vocalist and multi-instrumentalist  Kaito Winse) meets a Brussels noise punk duo. A new alloy that deconstructs both traditional and futurist knowledge.

This thrilling ensemble is releasing their self-titled debut album hot on the heels of their acclaimed 4-song EP Dabalomuni (January 2022), that The Wire called “freaked, juddering electronic punk.”

 A mysterious matrix that echoes disparate (but strangely compatible) sonic strands:  deep griot traditions, Fugazi, Can, 70s era Zappa, Black Midi, the full throttle rush of Nyege Nyege Tapes.

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Emerging from an original dimension in sound, the polygenesis Avalanche Kaito redefine what it is to talk with the ancients whilst leaping forth into a futuristic chaos of noise on their debut album journey. A palpable experience with each sonic blast, each layer a revelation, this simultaneously taut but expansive universe, in which the oral traditions of the West African griot converge with Belgium post-punk, exists in its own space.

Urban griot and multi-instrumentalist Kaito Winse ((vocals, tama, peul flutes, mouth bow) fortuitously collided with Brussels noise punk musicians Benjamin Chaval (drums, electronics) and Arnaud Paquotte (bass) from the group Le Jour du Seigneur, after a friend of theirs in Burkina Faso played Kaito some of the duo’s pummeling music.  Through a twisting sequence of events, the trio eventually met and began developing the soundworld of ancestral proverbs and dataist inspired technology that defines the album.

Although the album is being released six months after the debut Dabalomuni EP showcase, the guitarist from that extraordinary otherworldly session, Nico Gitto is now part of the transformed setup; not so much replacing Paquotte as expanding the sound into another direction.

The Dabalomuni EP was just a small window into a greater universe of animalistic symbolism and allegorical stories, wildly vociferated and loquaciously delivered under a rich exotic canopy or, echoed out into the ether. With the help of the visual language program PureData (an open-source apparatus for creating interactive computer music and multimedia works) and his pummeling, rattled drumming, Benjamin and his sinewy bassist foil Arnaud create an effective torque and tumult for Kaito’s commune with his roots and life in a very different bush of ghosts. Within that space, you’ll not only hear super charged traces of post-punk but the tribal, free jazz, prog, and industrial-electronica as well.

In a recent interview for the Trial & Error Collective site, Kaito expanded upon his role, his voice and unique lyrical proverb themes: ‘All these proverbs already exist. They are tools for teaching. They are intended to make people think without hitting them head on. In Burkina Faso we use proverbs. In my village the griots use proverbs. We prefer that people think for themselves rather than doing it for them. They go and discuss with the help of proverbs around a coffee or at the water’s edge. They use their own brain. If the proverb is nice to listen to, they will remember it. We don’t like it when people talk a lot. Tradition has used this so that people retain the proverbs and when a situation arises they will understand and use them. The proverb also makes the link between nature and humans.’

Kaito’s griot ancestry and the band’s motivation is a spontaneous escape from the addiction of the online world, a reconnection with the ritual of a live performance. You could call it an interaction between flesh and blood people.

Although created in a studio setting that live in the moment feeling and dynamism is authentically recreated on this album. In that same interview Benjamin outlines the group’s process, noting that in addition to the meticulously arranged song structures: ‘There was an improvised stage in the studio with Kaito and me, and then this material was worked on, it went into the digital mixer, to be enriched with computational sourdough.’

In practice that blows up and out into the inter-dimensional slackened bass stalk of ‘Sunguru’, and the wilder hysterics and danger of the progressive deconstruction ‘Douaga’. In that post-punk mode, a Jah Wobble-like throbbed esoteric bass converges with more celestial manifestations on ‘Goomde’, whilst ‘Eya’ features a certain Scott Walker atmospheric gloom and earthy soul tumbling drums. At any one-time this trio are snarling yet hypnotic, willowy but thickened with a brooding menace.

All of this comes alive to create a mysterious matrix that echoes disparate (but strangely compatible) strands:  deep griot traditions, Fugazi, Can, 70s era Zappa, Black Midi, the full throttle rush of Nyege Nyege Tapes.

Magnetic in straddling multiple worlds Avalanche Kaito are metal and flesh, blood and biometrics, tradition and transition, all wrapped up on a chaotic road trip. The open road, pathway from Kaito’s village home of Lankoé in landlocked Burkina Faso to Brussels proves infinitely more important, radical and creative than the destination. 

01. Moulin (03:34)
02. Le repas du cobra (05:03)
03. Le monde a deux faces (02:37)
04. Dabalomuni (04:44)

“They are as their name suggests, an act who strike unexpectedly. And they are sensational… an enervating wall of noise given a focus by the incredible presence of singer, the Burkina Faso griot, Kaito Winse. The best kind of buzz.”
— Louder Than War (September 2021)

“Kaito, of Avalanche Kaito, is a Burkinabe urban griot and percussionist: two of the four tracks on Dabalomuni feature his recitals against swirling beatless electronic noise created by his Brussels based collaborators. (…) The two other tracks move out with freaked, juddering electronic punk, energetically grinding their way (…)
— The Wire (February 2022)

Avalanche Kaito: a Burkinabe urban griot (vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Kaito Winse) meets a Brussels noise punk duo (Drummer/dataist Benjamin Chaval and guitarist Nico Gitto). It’s a completely new alloy and a huge opportunity to deconstruct both traditional and futurist knowledge. It is the sound of the world as it truly is; an unruly and unforgettable sonic explosion created by the intersection of wayward travellers. The 4-song digital EP »Dabalomuni« (out January 21st) is Avalanche Kaito’s opening salvo. Their self-titled full-length album will be released via Glitterbeat Records in June of 2022.