Montreal's Moonshine Collective Shares Two New Singles

Both "Ginseng" and "Malembe" will appear on a forthcoming album

BY Calum SlingerlandPublished Apr 8, 2021

The Montreal-founded, globally-based collective Moonshine are showing off their worldly ties on a pair of new singles. Both "Ginseng" and "Malembe" can be heard in the players below.

"Ginseng" arrives courtesy of Parisian producer, DJ and Boukan Records founder Bamao Yendé, while producer/DJ Boddhi Satva taps Moonshine co-founder Pierre Kwenders and Kinshasa-based MC Redbull for the dancefloor-ready "Malembe."

The former single also arrives alongside an accompanying video, co-directed by Kwenders, Nizar Saleh Mohamed and Hervé "Coltan" Kalongo. It's the first act of a full Zaïre Space Program documentary coming soon form the collective.

"'Ginseng' represents the kind of energy that really uplifts the performers in the music video," said Kwenders of the first single. "Bamao Yendé has such an intriguing way of starting the track, and within a minute the energy goes wild — he wants you to get up, enjoy life, have a breath of fresh air and a moment of pleasure."

Of the visuals, Kwenders added: "We wanted to film the video outdoors in one of the artist's neighbourhoods to see the reality of Kinshasa life and the effect of the costumes on people. We get to witness in these images the powerful language of percussive music, the ancestral language of traditional costumes in DRC, the social commentary the artists are making by using plastic and other discarded materials to create new forms of these costumes. We see all these perspectives."

Both "Ginseng" and "Malembe" will appear on the fourth volume of Moonshine's SMS for Location mixtape series, expected to arrive this spring in partnership with FORESEEN Entertainment.

Last year, Kwenders teamed up with Clément Bazin for collaborative EP Classe Tendresse.


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