Batuk, "Again She Reigns"

Concise and subtly captivating house with windows opened to the past

Songs from Again She Reigns are somewhat buried on Batuk’s Spotify page, which feels like a miss. The third and most recent album by Carla Fonseca (aka Manteiga) and Nthato Mokgata (aka Spoek Mathambo) cannot possibly deserve to be entombed in algorithmic obscurity. Across its eight tracks, Fonseca & Mokgata - who hail from Mozambique and South Africa respectively - capitalize on their region’s rich legacy as a fount of brilliant downtempo house music. Mokgata is at his most rhythmically creative, diving deep into African musical tradition and turning up gold more consistently than a practiced alchemist. And Fonseca, in her songwriting and delivery, is attempting to do nothing less than rectify several centuries of distortion and erasure by colonial record-keeping, structuring each track as an ode to an overlooked or misrepresented woman in African history.

If this seems atypically political for electronic dance music, it shouldn’t, and it doesn’t. Batuk deftly lands the line between accessibility and depth, crafting a record that can comfortably settle into the background of a night out (or even a night in) but that offers infinitely more when listeners take time to unearth the stories behind each song’s name. In other words, Again She Reigns is one of the too-rare dance albums where context matters. It also makes it a perfect candidate for a classic track-by-track review, as long as you link the details. 

So let’s do it. 

“Rainha Makeda” leads off with a wonky percussive pattern that sounds almost off-kilter before the kick drum lifts it into a cloud of warm synth chords. Fonseca maintains the same laid-back vibes on “Mutumia Ngatha (On The Other Side),” accompanied by a jaunty piano vamp and log drum rhythm that provides the album's most explicit nod to the amapiano sub-genre that was taking off around the same time Batuk dropped Again She Reigns. The mood begins to turn on “Fezekile Khwezi” as Fonseca’s vocals shift to a lament that befits the song’s subject. “The Promise” continues down this line with infusions from dub reggae, drawing on echo-heavy synths and spacious sub-bass notes to shape a track cavernous enough to swallow the listener whole. 

This expansiveness is rapidly refocused on “Hypatia’s Theory” by a call-and-response Dembow rhythm that ranks among the most kinetic beats Mokgata has ever put together. “Josina Hoje” keeps that energy but brings the pianos back, with Fonseca returning to her native Portuguese as she pays homage to one of Mozambique’s youngest revolutionaries. “Perpetua & Felicity” then comes in and stands out as the only track that hints at how prodigious Fonseca is as a rapper, Mokgata lacing his production with just enough gqom-esque aggression to complement her flow. “Dahomey Warrior” carries that aggression through to the album’s close, bottling it into a smoldering stretch of rave-ready house slashed up with stabs of funk that flash like heat lightning across the face of a gathering storm. 

And that’s it, at least on Bandcamp (the Spotify version ends with “Fezekile Khwezi”). Whatever the intention, the lack of finality provided by “Dahomey Warrior” feels fitting. It primes the listener to prepare for something next, regardless of whether that next move is to the club or the streets. Either way, they’ll likely find Batuk waiting for them there.