Tag Archive: mr raoul k

Mr. Raoul K, The African Government

Mr. Raoul K’s The African Government on Mule Musiq hearkens back to his dance music salad days and showcases where he’s at now as a producer.

Mr. Raoul K, Mystic Things

We love to drag geography into discussions of dance music, and with Mr. Raoul K, it’s hard not to. Turned onto to electronic dance music after moving from the Ivory Coast to Hamburg, his reputation as a producer is founded on a growing catalog of euphoric and rather continental club tracks that swirl with traditional African elements. African motifs are hardly anomalous in dance music, but they’ve held an uncommonly prominent role in this particular producer’s discography, and not just the rhythms, either. From the balafon twinkling through last year’s excellent “Wind of Goree” for Mule Musiq to the shudders of kora heard on 2008’s “Le Cercle Peul,” Raoul’s keen interest in working with live recordings of African acoustic instruments is probably the first you notice when you hear his music — at least it was, anyway.