Doko Mien: Ibibio for “tell me,” and the title of the dazzling new album from London’s genre-bending, culture-fusing Ibibio Sound Machine. The follow-up to their Merge debut Uyai is out everywhere on March 22. The album’s title track—a song that features disco beats colliding with polyrhythm and pizzicato guitar—can be heard below..
Music is a universal language, but spoken language can help you think about what makes you emotional, what makes you feel certain feelings, what you want to see in the world,” says Eno Williams, frontwoman of Ibibio Sound Machine. When Williams uses both English and Ibibio—the Nigerian language from which her band’s name is derived—on Doko Mien, the group somehow produces a world of both entrancing specificity and comforting universality, a language entirely of their own. In a glowing piece in the New York Times, the songs on Uyai were praised for following “in the tradition of much African music, [making] themselves the conscience of a community.” By pulsing the mystic shapes of Williams’ lines through further inventive, glittering collages of genre on Doko Mien, Ibibio Sound Machine crack apart the horizon separating cultures, between nature and technology, between joy and pain, between tradition and future.
Long lauded for their jubilant, explosive live shows, Entertainment Weekly best described them, saying, “If the United Nations’ General Assembly convened at Studio 54, Ibibio Sound Machine would easily be that night’s headlining act”), the group fully captures that energy and communication on the new album. Don’t miss your chance to hear the new songs live on their recently announced tours of North America and Europe. Also, make sure to follow Ibibio Sound Machine on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as there’s more to come from this exciting group in 2019.
DOKO MIEN TRACK LISTING
1 – I Need You to Be Sweet Like Sugar (Nnge Nte Suka)
2 – Wanna Come Down
3 – Tell Me (Doko Mien)
4 – I Know That You’re Thinking About Me
5 – I Will Run
6 – Just Go Forward (Ka I So)
7 – She Work Very Hard
8 – Nyak Mien
9 – Kuka
10 – Guess We Found a Way
11 – Basquiat*
