Published in the April 2010 Issue of DJ Times Magazine
Volume 23 - Number 04
By Lily Moayeri

The Portuguese collective Buraka Som Sistema has gone through a few personality changes before settling on its current state. The Lisbon-based act is comprised of two DJs—Lil’ John and Riot—plus two MCs, Conductor and Kalaf.

The DJs initially worked as the drum-n-bass act Fusion Lab, and later, the Cool Train Crew, for which Kalaf was a sometime vocal collaborator. Upon meeting Conductor, an Angolan hip-hop producer, the sounds that now define Buraka Som Sistema were solidified and the quartet named itself after the district where they reside.

As evidenced by two full-lengths, From Buraka To The World and Black Diamond, the group’s kuduro sound—an upbeat Angolan dance genre—defines the group’s direction. “It is about Angolan kids trying to make techno in the early ’90s,” Riot explains. “It sounds different because their influences are not the same as a kid living in Detroit or London or Berlin. Despite the strong connection between kuduro and more traditional African styles of music, kuduro was born straight out of a computer.”

For the collective’s contribution to the FabricLive series—FabricLive 49, for those keeping count —kuduro plays a large part—but it is by no means the only style heard. There is the input of Angolan analog techno, modern Portuguese dance, and dirty ghetto beats, making the Buraka sound a ferocious new animal.

“Right now, there are a lot of things that have similar elements to the ones that we use in our music,” Lil’ John points out. “From the snare patterns in U.K. funk to the more straight-to-the-point house artists like Sonic C, Douster’s drum patterns, and Solo’s Brazilian sampling, we tried to blend all this together and make it work as a bigger point of view on the music we make.”

Raging electro stabs and belching basslines race through this devastating mix. Skream’s “Fick” honks away as Zomby’s “Dynamite Sandwich” rubs and flutters its way to the declarations of Crime Mob’s “Rock Yo Hips” and the hiccups of DJ Malvado’s “Puto Mekie.” The best bits on FabricLive 49, however, are Buraka’s own compositions and remixes. (Check their pulsating mix of L-Vis 1990’s “United Groove.”) These escalate the energy level, crunching and smashing everything in their path.

Riot and Lil’ John are 98-percent responsible for the mixing—albeit with the recommendations and input of the other two—and that’s done in Ableton Live. This is primarily to adjust the varied BPMs, so the mix sounds less flawed—plus, their intention was to do more of a mixtape than a DJ mix.
Additionally, there are jah horn effects, boat sounds, and other external sounds—staples in Buraka’s DJ sets that have found their way onto the mix.

FabricLive 49 is an accurate snapshot of Buraka’s residency at that club. There, as in all venues, the normal set-up would include Serato Scratch Live, a mixer, two computers—one for effects, the other for Serato—plus, one or two microphones. Riot and Lil’ John man the DJing duties jointly. The residency at Fabric and their various gigs in Portugal have shaped their production efforts a great deal.

“When you have a residency, you start to better understand what you should play to a certain type of crowd,” says Riot. “That has a major influence on the music-making tip. You start to think more like a DJ in the production room, and not just like a producer. Our surroundings and our living make us what we are. If you change that, your take on music will also change—in our case, for the better.”