Festival booking is brutal- with anxious patrons clambering for as stacked a line-up as they can possibly get, all while not being hesitant to bombard festival organisers with negative feedback should they have an underwhelming experience. With this in mind, I think it’s fair to say that Lighthouse Festival (LHF) has smashed it with their…
On a sweltering Friday night in Braamfontein, cultural venue The Forge hosted it latest Off The Score exploratory music night. Exploratory music is an umbrella term for the indefinably new and the radically different. It incorporates any sonic performance that falls outside the limits of genre and traditional song formats. Not shackled to the capitalist…
As an artist, you often work for years without a significant amount of people paying attention to you. This is a double-edged sword of course, as an artist often craves the attention of the public and needs their support to survive, but simultaneously needs space to develop their craft without public pressures weighing them down….
After winning its independence from France in a brutal civil war, Algeria became a haven for liberation movements and revolutionaries from around the global South. Specifically the city of Algiers, which was home to a cast of “third world” dreamers from South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Angola, Vietnam and the US to name but a few….
Pietermaritzburg isn’t exactly known as a hotbed for local talent. That’s not to say that there aren’t countless talented people from Maritzburg, it’s just that the rest of us don’t know about them until they leave. It’s the whole if a tree falls in the woods thing. If a dope album is made in a…
Burial, the recording name of London producer Will Bevan, is one of the most cultishly adored electronic producers of our time. With his albums Burial (2006) and Untrue (2007), he created a sonic universe that was at once beautiful and bleak. His music conjures immediate images of rain-swept streets, melancholic comedowns and lost futures. Burial’s…
It’s been a year since Boyz ‘N Bucks co-founder and Spova Gang member uSanele returned to music with the release of the EP Gangular, and he is back once again with his uMvelase EP. In contrast to his previous release which saw the rapper show his versatility by merging different genres, uMvelase is a record…
A dark moody atmosphere- you can almost taste the smoke and all it shrouds -a blue and purple dimly lit bar that could be both nowhere and everywhere all at once, a single arm outstretched towards me as I watch. A face that looks away from me, their eyes draped by the lashes of despair….
The last decade has seen golden era kwaito give way to the likes of new age, future- and Durban-kwaito as well as a growing number of genre-fluid articulations of the style along with artists who count kwaito as one of their many influences. These artists are at the forefront of evolving the genre; moving away…
The artist talks experimental sounds, healing, Johannesburg displacement and trauma on Grindr. “To be honest, I can’t even tell you what I was healing from” Desire laughs over the phone with me. I’m on a midday call with Desire who is in their hometown situated in KZN as he graciously accepts the interruption. With this…
South African born, Berlin-based Lakuti (Lerato Khathi) is a force to be reckoned with. While she might not be a household name in South Africa these days, she has been making quite an impact on the European electronic music scene for over 20 years. In her extensive career, the DJ, label head, promoter, booking agent and…
2019 has been a year to remember for one of British youth’s brightest voices Stormzy. From a Time magazine cover star to becoming the first Black British artist to headline arguably the biggest festival in the world; Glastonbury, donning a Banksy designed stab-proof vest with a washed-out Union Jack painted on. Mix in his first…
