Album review:Lous and the Yakuza - Gore (2020)
I don’t know about you, but two full months into the new year I’m still recovering from 2020. Not that we had much of chance to do so. After all, Britain has spent the beginning of 2021 in lockdown.
A lot has been written about the sense of isolation surrounding the pandemic, and equally about the methods we found to ease that feeling. Some of us took up new hobbies, others sought shelter in activities that were already part of their daily life like reading or streaming TV shows. For so many of us, art has been a means of consolation.
I’m sure that for many readers of The Radar, like me, music has been a powerful ally throughout these bleak times. With a bit more time on my hands than usual, I had the chance to look beyond my comfort zone and explore my tastes. And that’s how I found Lous.
Lous and the Yakuza is the stage name of Marie-Pierra Kakoma, born in the Democratic Republic of Congo by a Congolese father and a Rwandan mother in 1996. Due to the military and ethnic conflicts in the region, she spent most of her childhood between Rwanda and Belgium, where her family settled permanently in 2011. Lous’s history of international mobility, together with her interest in music since she was 7, gave her art a multiplicity of cultural influences, with elements derived from European, African, and even Asian music traditions. Gore, her first studio album, was released in October 2020 after a series of very promising singles, including two collaborations with artists from Belgium and Italy.
What I really like about Gore and Lous’s music in general is the unique mix of sound and lyrics. The instrumentals mix trap sounds, R&B, and more subtle influences. In the album single Amigo, for example, it’s easy to catch a hint of the Central and West African percussion traditions within Lous’s blousy and urban trademark sound. Somewhat differently from the wider trap genre, lyrics are also fundamental in her music. Lous’s language is as multifaceted as her music. She mostly sings in French, but incorporates expressions in English and Kinyarwanda, which is spoken in both her parents’ native countries. The lyrics are evocative and deeply introspective, taking multiple listens to start decodifying.
The ten songs that make up the album, which lasts only 29 minutes, seem to paint a complex and yet far from complete portrait of the artist. The music videos, where Lous plays with different visual elements including make-up, costumes and scenography, are also essential to build her artistic identity. The silky sounds, almost grungy but also highly sophisticated, lull the listener into a parallel world on which Lous seems to have full control over. Few artists today can build such a comprehensive poetic.
Since it came out, Gore has been my faithful companion while I was both dealing with the loneliness of social distancing and settling into a new city. The album’s world-building potential is difficult to exhaust, and every new listening carries a new set of emotions and suggestions. With her mix of sounds, visuals and cultural influences, Lous locates her music in an intimate universe shaped by her personal experiences and sensibility, both everywhere and nowhere.
Words by Fransesca Di Fazio