Album Review: Mandela Effect by Gonjasufi

Mandela Effect is a companion piece to Gonjasufi's bleak, confrontational 2016 full-length, Callus, containing remixes of several tracks from that album, in addition to new recordings and collaborations. The release ventures further down the dark, winding path set by previous Gonjasufi efforts, with several fellow travelers aligning themselves with his unique vision. Here, it seems like the vocalist/producer (named Sumach Ecks) is paying homage to trip-hop at its darkest and most claustrophobic.

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The Mandela Effect. The collective misremembering of details or events, named after the rather peculiar instance of a large group of unconnected people sharing the same memory. In this case the erroneous recollection of Nelson Mandela's death in prison in the mid-1980s rather than his actual death in December 2013. This "effect" has snowballed in popularity since then as people began to seemingly find further examples.

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Building on last year's critically acclaimed Callus, it sees him stretch ever forward, delivering a collection of tracks that defy easy definition and feature collaborators including underground hop-hop group Shabazz Palaces , Daddy G from Massive Attack and famed Nigerian percussionist Tony Allen . His take on the Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man song "Show" sees him give this song an eerily downbeat makeover that sees reverb-heavy beats line up against haunting vocals and minimal, stripped back, synthetic melodies, while Daddy G's reworking of "Your Maker" is underpinned by a rich, heavily textured rhythm that sees climbing melodies weave themselves tightly around swift sonic pauses. At its heart, Mandela Effect is an exploration of texture, something mdae most evident on the abstract hip hop which lays at the burning central core of Shabazz Palaces' reworked version of "Afrikan Spaceship" - a track centred around an intermittent bass-driven rhythm and motorcycle samples.

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