Afrotronix Announces New Album 'KOD' Out January 16, 2026

 

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Montreal / N'Djamena — Afrotronix (Caleb Rimtobaye), the Chadian‑born artist whose music fuses ancestral rites and Sara, Gourane and Arabic vocal traditions with cutting‑edge electronic production, today announces KÖD, a new album that reimagines the future of music. Reinventing popular genres, KÖD is proof that the most futuristic sound is also the oldest.


Chad’s first electronic export — Afrotronix is an Afrofuturist icon.​​ Led by Chadian guitarist-producer Caleb Rimtobaye from Montreal, the project fuses Electronic Music, Afro Tech, Amapiano, and Afro House into what he calls “Saharan Electro” — a bold, ancestral pulse for the future. Born in Chad and raised amid the spiritual and musical practices of his people, Afrotronix transformed early civil war traumas into a mission of communal healing and unity. Self‑taught in Dj, voice and guitar, he won the Jeux de la Francophonie in 2001 and relocated to Montreal, where he developed a signature sound — “Saharan Electro Blues” — that pairs Nganja initiation chants and Sara vocal textures with deep house, dubstep and ambient electronics.


With 130+ festivals worldwide (WOMAD, Afropunk Paris, JOVA Beach Party), collaborations with Baaba Maal, Youssou N’dour, Lorenzo Jovanotti, and Stonebwoy, and 18 global awards including Best African DJ (AFRIMA 2018) and Best African Electro Artist (2019), Afrotronix is Chad’s most internationally recognized musical export.


Wearing the DOM — a helmet symbolizing reimagined ancestral wisdom — Afrotronix creates sonic mosaics from electric guitar, live percussion, and cutting-edge visuals. His upcoming album Köd imagines an inclusive world rooted in shared memory, healing, and groove: “a dance of intersecting horizons and futures to be created together.”

In a landscape of sameness, Afrotronix is a genuine discovery — music that dares to dream and dance beyond borders, time and space.


KÖD — Language and Code

KÖD is an interrogation and celebration of what must remain sacred as technology evolves. The album embeds ancestral rhythms into modern algorithms, asking which cultural codes should be stewarded by human hands even as we teach machines our cultural vocabularies. Sparse, spiritual motifs sit alongside propulsive production to create immersive, transcendent soundscapes. Raised by griots, trained by machines, Afrotronix transforms cultural erasure into pan-African electronic liberation. (Cf Le Monde - Electro Libre)


KÖD in Sara means the tam-tam, the talking drum that has carried messages across African landscapes for millennia. Through specific beats and rhythms, different tribes decode different meanings — a sophisticated system of communication that predates written language. The talking drum represents one of humanity’s earliest forms of coding: rhythm as language, sound as data, drum as transmitter.This ancient system represents one of the first examples of human coding: information transmitted through rhythm, requiring both sender and receiver to share the same interpretive key. The talking drum required both technical skill (the drummer) and cultural literacy (the listener) — a perfect parallel to today’s relationship between human creativity and digital technology. Humanity’s first algorithm was written in rhythm. KÖD honors this legacy.


A Pan‑African Collaboration

Featuring collaborators from Chad, Nigeria, Sudan, Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Congo and Canada, KÖD underscores Afrotronix’s role as a cultural facilitator and pan ‏African creative leader. The project centers unity, cultural pride and collective healing — music as ritual and gathering for communities across continents.


Baaba Maal - Senegal - Featuring on The Miracle

Born in Podor, Northern Senegal, Baaba Maal is one of Africa’s most internationally celebrated artists. Rooted in Fulani/Pulaar musical traditions, he’s spent four decades expanding the boundaries of African music, fusing ancestral sounds with rock, electronic, reggae, and world music influences. A Grammy-nominated artist and collaborator with legends like Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, Mumford & Sons, and Hans Zimmer (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack), Baaba’s soaring voice carries messages of unity, education, and social justice. Beyond music, he’s a tireless humanitarian — founding initiatives to support youth, agriculture, and cultural preservation across Africa. From his groundbreaking albums Djam Leelii and Firin’ in Fouta to recent work like Being, Baaba Maal remains a bridge between tradition and innovation, a griot for the global age.

Stonebwoy - Ghana - Featuring on Beyond the Sky

Ghana’s most decorated dancehall/Afrobeats architect with multiple BET and VGMA awards. The voice that turned “Activate” and “Bawasaaba” into continental anthems, proving African rhythms dominate global stages. Stonebwoy fuses reggae-dancehall grit with Afrobeats fire, creating a pan-African sound that moves from Accra to Kingston to the world. He is a living bridge between Caribbean bass and African soul. The song Beyond the Sky with Afrotronix is a never seen before, experimental structure, deeply spiritual vibrations, the roots of the future african reggae.


Eman Alshareef - Soudan - Featuring on Soudani Girl

A source of many Soudanese musical masterpieces, Eman is a Soudanese voice raising to celebrate unconditional love and cultural beauty. Featuring with Afrotronix states the obvious but also ignored humanity of the people of Soudan. With powerful pieces of art celebrating love and humanity, the goal is to bring attention to the Soudan situation.


Nissa Seych - Seychelles - Featuring on Maachi Wene

Born in the Seychelles and raised on a soundtrack of Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley, and Lauryn Hill, Nissa Seych has been turning heartfelt words into captivating songs since childhood. Now based in Montreal, her signature engages an eclectic fusion of Afrobeat, reggae, dancehall, R&B, and hip-hop — all rooted in her Creole heritage and Afro-Caribbean identity. Beyond the beats, Nissa’s mission is empowerment: proving women can thrive as authentic artists. With ties to Kaytranada and Mr Eazi, and years refining her craft, she’s ready to break borders — linguistic, cultural, and musical.


Djely Tapa - Mali - Featuring on Untold Stories

Born in Kayes, Mali, into an illustrious griot lineage — daughter of legendary vocalist Kandia Kouyaté and dancer Djely Bouya Diarra — Djely Tapa carries centuries of djeliya (griot artistry) in her voice and commands the future. She collaborated with major artists before launching her 2019 solo debut Barokan, produced by Afrotronix and winner of the 2020 JUNO Award for Best World Music Album. Now Multi awarded artist, her soaring, incandescent voice channels Mandingue tradition through contemporary experimentation, singing messages of feminine strength, hope, and social justice in Malinké, Bambara, Khassonké, and French. She’s shared stages with Oumou Sangaré, Tiken Jah Fakoly, cementing her role as both guardian of griot heritage and explorer of new sonic territories.


Seydina - Senegal - Featuring on Woma

Born in Thiaroye, tempered by humility, refined by music — Seydina’s voice is a prayer wrapped in gold. His songs carry messages of peace and family across mbalakh rhythms, jazz harmonies, and Afro-electro pulses. From Senegal to Montreal, his art awakens and adapts seamlessly across genres: mbalakh, rap, jazz, folk, and Afro-electro.


Artist Statement

“My work teaches digital systems the languages and rhythms of our ancestors,” says Afrotronix. “KÖD is about preserving what is sacred while using new tools to amplify our voices. It’s a call to remember where we come from as we build what’s next.” It is also proof that the most futuristic sound is also the oldest.


KÖD is built on two foundational elements: the ever-present drum, and traditional vocal techniques reimagined as organic synthesizers. Through the vocoder, I’ve created what I call “the voice of an African robot” — textures and words the world has never encountered. For the first time, a robot speaks Sara and Goulay.

The album’s opening track captures machines in the act of learning — attempting to decode linguistic patterns and melodic structures. I’ve fed these machines my life’s work: years of collecting and archiving Sahelian musical traditions, voices preserved on worn cassettes from my childhood, now digitized and made legible to algorithms. The machines are hungry, reaching, learning. Beneath the layers, their message is clear “Feed me with the African database.”


Anything we give AI, it can reproduce. But there are codes it will never grasp—gestures, sighs, silences laden with culture. KÖD celebrates these sacred spaces that make us irreplaceable. We create the machines, but we keep our mysteries. KÖD is a meditation on what eludes machines. Artificial intelligence can learn our languages, reproduce our melodies, even compose for us. But there is a language it will never understand: that of ancestral gestures, sighs laden with stories, ritual silences that speak the unspeakable. These are our secret codes—passed down skin to skin, gaze to gaze, from generation to generation. KÖD celebrates these human mysteries, these sacred spaces where we remain irreplaceable. We create the algorithms. But we keep our souls. We remain the guardians of the invisible, the masters of our own codes. The lords of our creations.


One‑line pitch

Afrotronix fuses Chadian initiation rhythms and Sara, Gourane and Arabic vocal heritage with forward‑looking electronic production — crafting a spiritual, pan‑African sound that bridges ancestral wisdom and the music of tomorrow in a Sonic Ritual Initiation.


Availability & Upcoming Dates

KÖD is set for release January 16th. Tour dates, singles, music videos and special community performances will be announced in the coming weeks.


Produced with the support of the Canadian Art Council for the Art, and Musicaction.


SONGS:


GOURNA KÖD


An Afrofuturistic take on Chadian Gourna.

​This is a first. The Massa people - proudly known as “bananaa” - have been dismissed as primitive even in Chad, their own country. But they stand tall as the fierce guardians of ancient traditions, the tribe that has resisted the homogenizing tide of globalization like no other.

The Gourna is the pulse of Massa warriors, and i wanted to transform it into a revolution for modern music.

This track is an opportunity to shine a spotlight on this tribe, to turn their ancestral beat into the sound of the subregion. By injecting electro into something ancient, I’m bringing fresh swagger to timeless heritage - this is about to explode across the Chadian music scene. (A similar rhythm pulses through Cameroon too.)

This track is a tribute to the sentinels of tradition - a thunderous thank you, a deep bow of respect to those who keep the flame alive.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​



MAACHI WÉNE

Featuring NISSA SEYCH

Maachi Wene, arabic for where I am going ? Featuring Nissa Seych, a song for the wanderer who discovers they’ve become a stranger in their own story and chooses to rewrite it elsewhere.

UNTOLD STORIES

Featuring Djely Tapa

An Afrofuturistic take on a crossover from Madingue Rhythm and Toubou



The song is an extension of a long-standing collaboration with well-known Malian griotte Djely Tapa. I brought her the Toubou rhythm, to find out it is also a Mandingue rhythm! Mini accents reflect their diversity and variations, but the same exact structure.



UNTOLD STORIES at the rhythmic level is the meeting of two twin rhythms, and their evolution in two tribes separated by geography but united by pulse. This particular rhythm is also present in southern Morocco and Tunisia. When Toubou people hear this track, they’ll instantly recognize their ancestral beat - then get hit with the thrilling surprise of Djely Tapa’s Mandingue voice floating perfectly over it, like it was always meant to be there. It is an invitation to explore how Mandingue culture is extended to Chad.

​

The storytelling is inspired by a precious moment with my children, hungry for tales that have never been captured, never recorded. This untold stories will be part of the treasures of the future because what will be rare, will be the stories never told, never spoken. This is us catching them before they’re gone.



KAG DESS

An Afrofuturistic take on Chadian Nganja

Nganja is a sacred rhythm from the initiation ceremonies of southern Chad. Access to this rhythm is restricted, it carries power that not everyone is prepared to wield. During initiation, Nganja functions as a catalyst, awakening dormant abilities within the initiate: the power to command natural elements, to stop wind, to suspend rain.Nganja is the sound of ultimate accountability.
With the blessings of traditional initiates, Afrotronix has carried Nganja into the electronic realm.“Kag Dess” is a sonic reminder of our full authority over ourselves, over our circumstances, over the forces that seek to contain us. This is initiation as sound. This is power, electrified.



HIMINI

An Afrofuturistic take on Kidi Gourane

From upcoming album KÖD, here is Himini, a Gourane adventure in Northern Chad powered by Electronique machinery. This song is the proof that the most futuristic sound is also the oldest.By defining tribal electronic music, Afrotronix positions himself as an avant-garde artist on the continent. His approach, in which he manages to teach machines the languages ​​and codes of the ancients, allows him not simply to use samples but to bend digital structures so that they truly capture the specificity of these original rhythms.



MALEMBÉ

SONO IN TERAPIA

Featuring HENDRY MASSAMBA

An Afrofuturistic take on Soukouss. Taking popular African rhythms, here soukous which has been the most popular rhythm on the African continent since independence and which has evolved a lot, with Kofi and Fally and now propose this new take.Artistically it is a challenge, a new impetus for the future of soukous.



I TEL IRÉ

Featuring MAGSO

An Afrofuturistic take on Haitian Konpa. A tender confession to the complice woman who walks in daylight and yet cannot uproot the tree of a love planted deeper than memory. Haitian Konpa reinvented make this electronic piece a real innovation in its genre.