Creepily dedicated readers of the blog may remember Afrirampo from some posts I made a few years ago where I celebrated their crazy and enthusiastic brand of rock music, especially as it contrasted to the increasingly dour state of indie rock. In 2010, the duo of Pika and Oni broke up after the release of their masterpiece, We Are Uchu No Ko, but they left the door open for a reunion by leaving their English-speaking fans with this very normal message: “If our mother of monster say ‘PLAY!PLAY!together!!’, then we will play.”
Fortunately, that (whatever it was) seems to have happened, as Afrirampo reunited this year and in September released a new album, Afriverse, which I then spent days trying to find a download of in dark corners of the internet because it wasn’t remotely accessible to Americans. I’m happy to say that I have the album, my laptop hasn’t melted yet, and Afrirampo are still the same delightful band they always were, even after eight years of not playing together.
It’s a little pointless to try to analyze Afriverse, because I can’t understand the lyrics (and I suspect a lot are nonsense anyway) and there aren’t really songs on it. Instead, what you get with Afrirampo is a certain energy that no other band has. I feel the state of music and music appreciation has become even more dull since Afrirampo were last together. A lot of artists make very self-consciously serious music and it’s treated with a boring sort of solemn respect by writers, to the point that people forget that music is supposed to be a fun thing to enjoy and talk about.
Amid this landscape, Afrirampo’s music is once again a much-needed burst of color and joy. It’s rock music that has a really simple elemental appeal, where it sounds like two artists who love making music together that are having a blast. It doesn’t really need to be more than that for me. I just enjoy hearing Oni’s bursts of guitar noise, Pika’s thunderous, technically sound drumming, and all of the silly call-and-response vocals.
It’d be easy to write off this music as just two weird people making random noise. It would also be correct, mostly. What makes it listenable is that they have a sense of dynamics and are capable of some semblance of restraint in the form of quieter passages, which adds to the impact of their noisy freakouts. There are also a lot of sneaky melodies and pleasant sounds within all of the chaos they’re creating. More than maybe any other band, Afrirampo can go from zero to ten at any second, which makes listening to them kind of like being on a rollercoaster with a blindfold on.
At least some of my love for Afrirampo is contextual: I wouldn’t want every band to sound like this, but they are a great escape from “normal” rock music that is so concerned with structure and takes itself so seriously. Their joyous playing captures the true spirit of rock and roll in its spontaneity and freedom. No other band could really sound like Afrirampo, but many could learn from them.
The Noise Made By People 