Multidisciplinary artist Devi Mambouka’s musical incarnation, Masma Dream World’s debut album, Play at Night, releases on 25 September via Northern Spy. Influenced by the likes of Amel Larrieux, Mariah Carey, Toni Braxton, and Zap Mama, Mambouka became a voracious listener of world music in her youth, Mambouka began landing DJ gigs in New York City while still a teen. With Play at Night, she tapped into her understanding of global culture, her connection to the natural world and a connection with the spiritual.
The album is ultimately an engagement with the subconscious and a trek down a healing path. One can hear this on “Sundown Forest”, for which Mambouka has delivered a new video. Its trance-like rhythms and vocals have an avant-garde feel. But rather than moving the song into a territory that’s not merely a shock to the system, the listener moves on a trajectory of transformation with the performer and arrives, in the space of just two minutes, on new terrain, better for knowing the music and the journey on which Mambouka leads us.