I’ll tell you one thing, Song’s From The Bath is a fucking trip. I’ll tell you some more things, I just felt like that was a good way to start. What else do you want to know? Is it a homage to Max Normal’s Songs From The Mall? No, no it is not. Did Thor…
Introducing our new feature: Bubblegum Club Stories. Each week we will put together a short video to let you know what has happened and what is happening in Johannesburg’s creative scene. We will be following creatives and giving you the scoop on what they are working on and what’s on their minds. We will be…
“The Siren’s Call” from producer Jumping Back Lash’s latest EP features Nonku Phiri. The video for this track provides the perfect mirror to the electrified melancholy in the sound. The opening silhouette of Nonku looking away from the viewer sets up a sense of longing and invokes a nostalgic mood. A grainy black and white…
The first time I opened the Soundcloud link to Jakinda’s Afrika 3000, I felt a powerful surge of the uncanny. And by uncanny, I don’t just mean mysterious. Rather it was the sense of what Freud famously called ‘ the unheimliche’. That is the sensation of a strange familiarity, the jolt of déjà vu. Or,…
The Karolinska Institute in Sweden has recently published a study that indicates musical talent may have a lot to do with genetics. Researchers compared pairs of identical twins, and found that no matter how much one twin had practiced up until that point in their life, the other twin, who had practiced much less, would still…
Writing about music from day to day usually isn’t that difficult. A lot of releases are so one-dimensional, cliché and uninspired that you can name drop a few genres, say some shit about a hook here or a beat there, give some info about the artist, throw in some hot-takes and you’re good to go….
If you’re a South African musician, there’s quite a bit that you can learn from Muzi. The charismatic producer from Empangeni seems to have one of the most level heads out of anyone I’ve met in the music industry, although he claims he’s “still figuring things out”. So there’s the first thing you can learn…
The dominant theme in the innumerable ‘best of 2016’ lists is disappointment, failure and despair. A year categorised by the rise of the Far Right, war, random acts of violence, hate speech, death and the ominous cracking of the polar ice caps. In the parts of the world that weren’t already in social crisis, this…
I feel an intensely personal connection with the mighty Texan punk band At The Drive- In. Let’s go back through the fog shrouded mists of time- October 2000, to be exact. I was up late on a school night, listening to the Barney Simon show on 5FM, trying to record songs from Radiohead’s Kid A…
The Bateleur eagle is a ubiquitous traveler above African skies. Its name is French for street performer, referring to how its wings bob and glide like a tight-rope walker as it stalks its prey. Like their animal namesake, Cape Town experimental collective enjoy the high places. Their newly released “first and final” full length self-titled…
The career trajectory of The Weeknd aka Abel Tesfaye is almost unbelievable. Just five years ago he was a fairly mysterious Canadian singer who spent 2011 dropping an awesomely debauched mixtape trilogy. I distinctly remember reading an article in 2012 which anointed him as the next Michael Jackson, which seemed hilariously optimistic at the time….
Cape Town has hope on the horizon. A city well known for its social segregation and physically apparent apartheid-born economic divides has a new underground-ish musical savior being birthed. A brand new festival, put on by Nomadiq Music, Black Major, We House Sundays and Wax On aims to create a space of exchange for the…
