Nkisi

ADAO

4 Oct

02h15

Born in the Congo and based in London, Melika Ngombe Kolombo carries the cultural and spiritual baggage of her country of origin both in her sound and chosen alias. Taking the designation of a spirit or object possessed by it in the rite of candomblé, NKISI recodifies that secular tradition in a cybernetic body, where ritual and trance are strategies of resistance and elevation. Shaping Congo’s traditional rhythms via technological processes lightened by Central African cosmology, the artist projects Afrofuturist visions through relentless polyrhythms, prismatic synth lines, grainy textures and the energy of Belgium’s industrial techno. After a couple of years discreetly honing such a unique proposition, ‘7 Directions’, released by Lee Gamble’s UIQ in 2019, proclaimed it all her own, always willing to break and/or mystify barriers between body and spirit. The essence of psychedelia as both a physical and mental state, continued since then, always evolving with its own internal logic from which the hallucinatory ‘The Altar’ is the latest offering. To OUT.FEST, NKISI brings her hybrid DJ set focused solely on her own productions.