- AFRICAN ROCK HERO -

Spontaneously: Who’s your favorite Cameroonian rock
musician? ... – Yikes, no one pops up in your mind? No
worries, let's just expand the radius: Which African rock
band makes you wanna escalate? – Still not easy, huh?
Let's just close the knowledge gap and listen to Cameroon's
most exciting rock export: Franck Biyong. The one who stands
for the future pan-­‐African sound. The one who has already
made his way into the public with many releases of various
musical styles.

The brand new album Moonwatching 2 tells a story
of self-­‐assertion and current societal challenges. And
it incorporates Franck's African musical influences into his
style from all his eras. He sounds defiant, loud and proud
and it is unmistakable that his inner, wild lion is fighting with
the rigid structures of the Western world.

Going against the grain; Franck cannot help it. As a child of
many musical and cultural worlds, none will be able to anchor
him forever. The gifted artist grew up in Gabon, Nigeria and
the Ivory Coast, before starting music projects in France and
the UK from the age of 14.

A short excursion into music history to understand Franck’s
background better: Originally, Nigerian artists pioneered
Afro-­‐Rock in the late 1960s and early 1970s.This
unique sound mixed melodic pentatonic guitar lines with
African rhythms including African percussion instruments,
which are rarely used in western rock music. His earliest
musical memories date back to this time, when the lines
between tradition and modernity began to blur. Then, in
the 1980s, pop culture helped to rise the profiles of Black
American artists such as the late Prince. Especially for
aspiring musicians like Biyong, this was a milestone.

Franck moves the limitations of African music with
Moonwatching II, extending the palette of newer sounds
in creative guitar music. As Afropop and Nigeria's Afrobeats
are recognized worldwide, African rock is almost missing,
although it’s one of the fundaments of Western rock music.

Is Franck Biyong the African Jimi Hendrix? Well ... Let’s say
it this way: Moonwatching II combines the abrasive sonics
of James Blood Ulmer with the melodic structures of early
progressive and art-­‐rock. So yes, Franck (who by
the way never intended to copy Jimi) naturally deals with
similar topics and sounds in his music…

Driven by eerie melancholy, surreal guitars, ghost voices
and strong musicianship, the psychedelic music does not get transfigured through the gentle but clear melodic lines...With Moonwatching II, Franck Biyong swaggers from Funkadelic
style rock before leading us to Frippertronics-­‐likesound
scapes...