Nakibembe Embaire Group & Naoyuki Uchida – Phantom Keys (2025; Nyege Nyege Tapes) – Avant Music News
The Nakibembe Embaire Group’s self-titled debut album was one of the highlights of 2023. Nyege Nyege Tapes captured the disappearing East African tradition of the embaire, a giant wooden xylophone designed to be played by as many as eight musicians at a time. The instrument can be the social center of a village, placed in a deep pit to amplify what is already a powerful sound.
On its own, the embaire ensemble generates a huge amount of energy. Repeating, overlapping figures are a kind of proto-minimalism, Steve Reich without the precise, bookish glaze. So why not, I imagine them asking, crank up the intensity even further?
The result is their live collaboration with Japanese live-sound engineer Naoyuki Uchida, Phantom Keys. Six men do their thing on the embaire, while Uchida applies his live-dub manipulations, adding echoes, delays, and more. The crowd participates, too: We can hear when the Tokyo crowd was particularly enthralled. (Or, I guess, when Uchida wants us to think so–he handled the post-processing, too.)
Uchida is fortunate in his collaborators. Put the microphones in the right place, and the Nakibembes are compelling enough on their own. Still, the live mix takes it to another level. When the engineer inserts an echo, we go even further into Reich territory, with the xylophones inadvertently phasing against themselves. The most substantial enhancements are the reverb-laden long tones, an electronic drone to set against the relentless acoustic pulse.
The live-processed, club-friendly embaire is a long way from Uganda village life, but the product–pure exultation–is the same.
