Like Schrödinger’s cat or Penrose’s staircase, Kouma is a paradox. A sound that is both dry and oozing, metallic and hammering, that springs like a geyser, a mutant power-trio that seems to have come straight from the bowels of the earth. On drums, abrasive and bumpy, Léo Dumont mistreats the rhythm and jostles the labyrinthine riffs produced by Damien Cluzel’s baritone guitar, the baritone sax and Romain Dugelay’s lo-fi synths. Three versatile musicians who commit themselves body and soul to the borders of the marked out genres.
A hundred leagues away from the established canons of jazz, although quite foreign to the spheres of independent rock, Kouma likes nothing less than to walk through different scenes, those where labels are shredded, where the underground can come out into the open. So yes, Kouma’s a bit like a rebellion from the underground, a kind of untamed psycho-trash-rock. A gruff bear’s head grafted onto a mischievous pony’s body. A mathematical sound to be heard while shouting out loud.
