Kamongo

L´Exotighost plan a new approach to the concept of Exotica for 2022. On their second album, Kamongo, they spice up the original recipe of the genre with an array of new flavours and textures. The result will delight Exotica fans and newcomers who enjoy discovering fresh, original sounds.

Kamongo is a swahili word for the lungfish that lives in river Congo. When the river dries it is able to survive a long period of time in the mud, using its lungs instead of its gills until rain season, when it becomes once again, a fish. This prodigy of nature is a symbol anyone who plays music can relate to, even more so if their genre is Exotica. The history of Exotica is a bumpy one through the decades, sometimes flowing smooth, sometimes stalling buried under the mud until almost disappearing, but with endless capacity to mutate sonically and to reach new people. Kamongo is a word with which instrumental, original artists identify themselves more than ever, in this era of extreme survival. Its an African word but it appears in a film that takes place in the Amazon jungle - the habit of switching concepts from one continent to the other being very related to exotica- Jack Arnold's "Creature From The Black Lagoon", in which kamongo is a living fossil, the humanoid creature that lives in the black lagoon. This film contains all characteristics of exotica: mystery, remote landscapes and a risky swapping of cultures. Kamongo's spirit is present throughout the whole album.

Exotique Mecanique opens the album and is a summary of its whole concept: oriental melodies, sounds inspired by surf music, subtle electronic processes, waves ambiance, theremin atmospheres, relentless rhythmic marimbas and a nightingale that seems mechanical but is completely real.

Kamongo smells of a Caribbean party, a cha-cha-cha with aged rum that soaks the euphoric choir and the loud mambo. An evident reminder of the rusty Tropic that Marc Ribot evoked in his Lounge Lizards-Tom Waits era.