Moonchild Sanelly first entered popular consciousness in the UK through collaborations with Ghetts and Ezra Collective. Collaborations that, although objectively good, in no way prepare you for the sheer intensity of Full Moon.
Stylistically making for a more polished distillation of what has come before, Full Moon sees the ‘future-ghetto-funk’ genre that Sanelly has been crafting since her 2015 debut Rabulapha! honed to a fine point and released in its purest, most exhilarating form.
The shine and polish of this album is partially down to Johan Hugo’s production. His catalogue, which includes artists from the US and UK, as well as the African continent (Self Esteem, Santigold, Baaba Maal) gives the album’s sound a cohesive sheen. There are also unmistakeable echoes of the airhorn-in-a-hurricane maximalism and joyous abandon of Charli xcx‘s recent work here: in Johannesburg, brat summer is in full flow.
Whilst Full Moon album itself is the definition of ‘all killer no filler’, a carefully curated collection it is not, and LP opener ‘Scrambled Eggs’ gives the feeling of having walking into a gig halfway through. By track number two (the unambiguously-titled ‘Big Booty’), however, you’re starting to enjoy yourself. By the third, you’re in love, dancing around your kitchen. “Fuck dinner, I’m pouring myself a Tequila” you decide as track four rolls around.
By the time you hit album highlight ‘Boom’, you’ve accidentally done three shots and turned the volume on your speakers up to antisocial levels. The final triple salvo of ‘I Love People’, ‘Mntanami’ and ‘I Was The Biggest Curse’ then grounds things enough to stave off an the heart attack, whilst crystallising the themes of female joy and empowerment into the most moving statement of the album.
These last tracks act as a gut-punch of joy and grief in equal measure. Full Moon closes with the post-rave clarity that suddenly the party is over, as the hedonism of the previous tracks giving way to something more serious, more tender and, ultimately, more necessary.
