Dumama

This is the solo debut from Berlin-based poet/composer Gugulethu Duma, but she previously released an acclaimed collaboration (Buffering Juju) with Algerian-German producer Kerim Melik Becker on Johannesburg’s pirate radio show-turned-record label Mushroom Hour back in 2020. Notably, this album’s endlessly evolving form first began to take shape even before the release of its predecessor, as Duma composed these pieces in her native South Africa before recording them in Brooklyn with Pakistani-American producer/multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily back in 2019. The pieces were then fleshed out in Duma’s adopted home of Berlin before she returned to South Africa to inventively reimagine and reshape the album with the help of producer Nandi Ndlovu and Mushroom Hour’s Dion Monti. The end result of that last session (the album in its present form) is pretty fucking revelatory, as the efforts of the two producers enabled Duma strike a perfect  and unique balance of African inspirations like Miriam Makeba, “the psychoacoustics of South Africa’s lore,” and more cutting edge electro-pop influences like FKA Twigs and Sudan Archives.

Fittingly, the piece that best captures Dumama and her collaborators at the height of their powers is the album’s lead single “No Abiding City,” which is a re-envisioning of a hymn from her childhood that she sang with her family “during moments of grief and transition.” The transformation seems like it must have been quite a radical one, however, as “No Abiding City” feels like a killer sensuous soul jam with plenty of trippy production flourishes and vivid sound design enhancements. That said, it is still quite a simple and minimal piece at its heart, as Dumama describes her palette as primarily just “voice, uHadi (a traditional Xhosa bow instrument), live vocal effected loops, processors, field recordings and distortions.” While the essence of the piece is little more than the rattling, percussive pulse of the uHadi, a xylophone melody, a few cool synth sounds, and Dumama’s deeply soulful vocals, the production tweaks elevate it into a sexily psychedelic banger viscerally enhanced with creaking, rattling, and cranking rhythmic elements and chopped, harmonized, and ululating vocal flourishes.

Notably, my other favorite piece (“Tumbled Out”) is a digital-only cut that did not make it onto the physical release, but I can grudgingly understand why as it is mostly a swirling freeform mindfuck of churning, squealing, and snarling strings, chopped up vocals, field recordings, collapsing structures, and psychotropic effects. Despite that, it still has a surprisingly strong vocal hook at its heart, as no amount of psychedelia can fully bury Dumama’s formidable pop instincts. The sublime opener “Layer After Layer” is another highlight, as Dumama laments the systems that have betrayed us with the seductive purr of a Nina Simone-level jazz diva over a languorous backdrop of quavering guitars, bleary synth tones, and a host of chopped and pitch-shifted vocal fragments.

Elsewhere, “Eating the Other” takes things in a far more gnarly, stomping, and visceral direction, as crashing and stumbling rock percussion, guitar noise, and spacy sprays of synth tones push Dumama’s vision into terrain that suggests that an African choir, The Melvins, Black Dice, a synth jazz ensemble, and a numbers station all accidentally booked the same rehearsal space and absolute chaos ensued. The album also features a number of other eclectic and freeform plunges into unconventional psychedelia, as “Rising Falling” combines smeary backwards piano, a bright yet ghostly chanting melody, and pitch-shifted spoken word reminiscent of Delia Derbyshire’s “Dreams,” while “What Did The Rain Say?” starts with a Colin Stetson-esque snaking saxophone motif and gradually darkens into a billowing and disorienting ASMR mindfuck.

While some tracks certainly strike a more seamless and hook-centered balance of Dumama’s eclectic and divergent influences than others, she definitely had a very cool overarching vision and it is easy to see why so many talented people were eager to help her get this long-gestating debut to the finish line, as she is quite a singular talent and Towards An Expanse is quite a singular album. As the proverb goes, “it takes a village to raise a child,” but raising this particular entity went considerably deeper than merely enlisting a host of killer collaborators, as Dumana’s outsized inspirations also pulled in threads from childhood songs,  African oral culture, deconstructionism, ancestral voices, gospel, post-punk, “electro-psychedelic space travel,” and “Black ontological understandings of circular time.” Dumama did not just write a cool batch of songs here—she attempted to distill all of the beauty, sadness, and mystery of life into an album-shaped vessel.  In short, this is proper top-tier outernational business and one of the most boldly unique albums of the year.

Listen here.