Don Zilla - Ekizikiza Mubwengula

by Maarten Schiethart

published: 23 / 12 / 2021

In our 'Re:View' section, Maarten Schiethart finds that baffling, avant garde electronic wizard from Kampala Don Zilla is graced with a divine touch on his new album 'Ekizikiza Mubwengula' which was released earlier this year.

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'Ekizikiza Mubwengula' is a stupendous miracle of innovation in sound. Busy like bees hovering over an ambulance car, sound effects ring back and forth. Rattling rhythms remind the reviewer of rather ruthless and reckless realms from which mayhem is virtue. Sending out these irate signals, Don Zilla sets the tone to an entirely new scheme. Brand new ideas are performed at deafening volume, most of them never heard before. The 'Ekizikiza Mubwengula' album works as a wake-up call, full of vigour, venom, vitality and vision. Don Zilla masters all these. A member of the thriving Nyenge Nyenge collective in the Ugandan capital Kampala, Don Zilla moulds hammering breakbeats, ambient esoterics, urban soundscapes, snippets from film scores and a touch of magic. It’s eerie, grim and ever so adventurous. The quintessence of the album lies in how it excels in making overwhelming disharmony into music. This sound is shaping up in Kampala. I have yet to hear any equivalent to this masterpiece of ripping-it-to-the-core jazz-fuelled and technofied breakbeats.