The first full LP released by Ugandan label Hakuna Kulala,
Villaelvin's
Headroof materialized when Welsh sound artist Elvin Brandhi (of father-daughter experimental duo
Yeah You) moved into the villa in Kampala, where she worked with several musicians from the Nyege Nyege collective. Participants included rappers Hakim and Swordman Kitala, producers Don Zilla and Oise, and percussionist Omutaba. The result is an anarchic assemblage of broken electronics and recontextualized sounds, turning incidental noises into music and contorting club rhythms far beyond their proper, functional states. The first few tracks are composed of dissolving voices, bird chirps, slamming doors, clanging swords, and other precariously arranged sounds. "Ettiquette Stomp" is framed by a grainy, thumping beat and slivers of whooping, crowing voices, sounding tense and poised. "Zillelvina" is where it all starts to rip apart, with explosive glitches spewing digital shrapnel everywhere, and half-chewed voices caught in the matrix. The nine-minute "Kaloli" touches on several different styles without landing on any of them, morphing from a crumbling dancehall-ish rhythm to quasi-footwork, then working up to a more traditional-sounding drum rhythm. Yet even the acoustic percussion is chopped up and fashioned into a digital battering ram. "Door 2 Porte Parole," easily one of the most absurd pieces here, focuses on squeaky sounds of all stripes, including door hinges, scraping violins, and Auto-Tuned vocals, with the swirling drones of a didgeridoo thrown in for good measure. There's rarely any indication of what's going to happen next at any point during
Headroof, and while there are a few ominous moments, mostly it's just a fun, bugged-out record that feels like it's constantly in pursuit of the most unruly sounds and rhythms possible.