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"Assume Crash Position" is the keenly-awaited new album from Congolese street band Konono No.1, whose 2005 debut was acclaimed by the press, the public and an army of celebrity admirers including Radiohead's Thom Yorke, Beck, Björk (whose album Volta featured a guest Konono performance), and Herbie Hancock.

Once again recorded in Kinshasa, the vast capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo by Congotronics series producer Vincent Kenis, "Assume Crash Position" sees their trademark junkyard sonics and hypnotic percussive grooves (created using thumb pianos and drums made from scrap metal and disused car parts) further enhanced with electric guitars and bass and a wider range of vocalists. Mixing traditonal bazombo trance music with the distortion of their modern home-made equipment their sound on "Assume Crash Position" is deeper, more layered and ethereal, without losing any of that signature raw power and driving energy. Gloriously extended full band tracks take off like never before but also, for the first time, we hear Konono stripped right back to their essence: the album's final song, "Nakobala Lisusu Te", features just the band's founder and leader, Mingiedi (now in his late-seventies) and his likembe.