Zap Mama, A Ma Zone (Luaka Bop)

You’re gliding though Outer Space and you encounter Zap Mama empress Marie Daulne and her troupe of lovely harmonizing African sisters. Inexplicably, they’ve painted their hands blue. They are singing in French (shades of Les Nubians), English (shades of Bjork) and various African dialects (shades of black). The music is spaced-out techno-Afro—literally. Burundi drums resonate a couple of light-years away, a James Brown-ish guitar riff echoes from Saturn’s surface and from the dark side of Venus, Congolese guitarist Papa Noel is reinterpreted by the delightfully-named Dizzy Mandjeku. There’s a bit of Morse code in the galaxy tonight, a spurt of air raid sirens, the magnified thud of a drop of water colliding with a meteor. What’s that? A whiff of a New Orleans brass band? A slight taste of the Chemical Brothers? A transcendent rimshot guides you home to your rocket where Marie waits seductively in a soothing pool of pure oxygen. She removes your metallic jumpsuit and whisper/sings: “I love you like you are—you are my own zero, love me like I am—I’m gonna be your goddess.” This is a space cadet’s dream come true.