AFRICAN FAMILY LAPTOP MUSICK

‘African Family Laptop Musick’ is Ian Mugerwa’s 4th dispatch as Dawuna since 2020’s still unfathomable ‘Glass
Lit Dream’, an album that we called “the debut of the century thus far” and which has still, somehow, evaded
any kind of meaningful crossover despite triggering total joy and bewilderment every single time we play it
to the uninitiated. Since that album, and shortly after a relocation to Baltimore, Mugerwa was involved in a
car accident that triggered a period of hospitalisation and amnesia. ‘African Family Laptop Music’ emerges
from that difficult period; recorded and pieced together while still in recovery. He doesn’t remember much
about the project at this point, just small flashes, but it’s easily the most personal, touching material he’s
shared to date.

Mugerwa calls the compositions simple, but it’s the kind of simple many have spent a lifetime trying to
engineer. On opener ‘I am a woman too’, daring lo-fi sound design lends texture to multi-tracked vocal
harmonies and a beat rapped on a table with knuckles and finger clicks, before tuning in to a chat between
elders on ‘Obulesi’, that he laments in the bloozy ache of the incredible ‘Family Trauma Drama’. Lashed to a
celestial vocal performance, he fleshes out the arrangement with downsampled waltzing hats and a single
snare hit with synths that sound like they’ve been lifted from a mid-’80s Sierra adventure game, before
being filtered out to a low hum. There’s a quiet virtuosity on show; it’s lo-fi, with all the aesthetic hallmarks
of some of the very best outsider gear, but Mugerwa builds on the foundations of ‘Glass Lit Dream’ and ‘Naya’
to provide an unmistakably Black ideation of hauntology. Approaching the very concept of memory from a
unique vantage point, he muddles dreams and impressions, sorting through the canon (think ‘Songs in the
Key of Life’, ‘Sign O’ the Times’, ‘Baduizm’, ‘Brown Sugar’ and ‘Full Moon’ just for starters) as it vanishes from
view.

What makes the record hit even harder is that Mugerwa collages the more “proper” songs with skits and
interludes that help map the narrative, taping conversations with his family and abstracting them with
disorientating glitches, synths and FX. ‘Pressure’ pushes deep on a bittersweet bruise with lyrics about
“the pain on your brain making fun of you”, set to the heaviest smudge of bass and organ recalling Angel
Bat Dawid’s ‘The Oracle’, whilst the latter stages reveal precious gems in the harpsichord sway of ‘Bipolar
Memory’,thru the lip-biting downswang and helium-voiced Camille vibes of ‘Grabba Boy Problem’ and a
poignant sign-off addressed to his father - not sure if that’s his dad or him upstairs - in a delicate prayer
‘Undo This Damage,’ which once over, is bound to make you rake back over all Dawuna’s gear to date.

“This is the last lil offering from a personal side of myself before I give y’all something big,” he assures
cryptically. “Enjoy.”

€ 32,50

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