kagablog

It is not so much a scent as
a presence
a strangulation
which
satanically
abrupts
redirects
freshly tumultous blood

Koos Kombuis, though he might deny it, is a South African institution. Cultural commentator, social provocateur, songwriter extraordinaire, poet and prankster, icon. The man’s CV is – well, impeccable is an ill-fitting word – ‘perfect’ seems wronger, but somehows closer to the truth. We glimpse through four seasons of the laughing, shrugging, living legend’s time..

The wandering poet & That kitchen – The early years.

Koos Kombuis’ particular flight into Rock & Roll destiny kicked off juuust right. Essentially a drifting poet, he wandered his earth kinda like Kane from ‘Kung Fu’, only with a pen rather than a sword – a stranger adrift and homeless in an alien world. Following a brief stint in a loony bin, he sold short stories to Huisgenoot and began publishing his idiosyncratic verse, living, for a meandering time, as the bum that would later inform his third album. It was in this period that a year-long stint squatting in mate Al Lovejoy’s kitchen got him the nickname later etched into South Africa’s Rock canon. Kombuis, under then pen-name Andre’ Le Toit, published 6 novellas and collections of poetry before releasing debut recording ‘Ver van die ou Kalahari’ in ‘87. In stores the cassettes of ‘Kalahari’ were emblazoned with stickers announcing ‘Vermy!’ (avoid!), courtesy of the Government.

Afrikaans my darling: Freedom in the Moedertaal – Let the music roll!

The guitar met Koos by accident. Neither had been particularly drawn to the other, but as the quirky alignment of stars would have it theirs was to be a destiny entwined. Koos the songwriter, appropriate to the mythology of SA Rock, came into focus while he was sharing a flat and girlfriend (you read right, don’t ask) with someday-to-be Valiant Swart. Songwriting seduced Koos away from literature for most of the following decade-and-a-half.
Along with founder Johannes Kerkorrel, and James Phillips, Kombuis spearheaded the legendary Voëlvry movement. The Eighties’ more three-dimensional answer to the literary political revolt of Die Sestigers (from, well, the Sixties), Voëlvry gave the Establishment and ol’ Groot Krokodil a stiff middle-finger, while strumming and celebrating that Afrikaans and Apartheid weren’t synonyms, and could rock and wail as much as the next lingo.

It’s a bird!? It’s a plane?? It’s Tassies onstage – The legend blooms.

The years that the icon of Koos began glowing, tipsily. That amused smirk, the dubious bandana, the ol’ faithful bottle of Tassenberg, and a bare stage. There is something strikingly modest about Koos’ relation to his larger-than-life presence. Outside of the vaster orbits of historically key politicians, and SA’s version of movie-stars – the sports heroes - Koos Kombuis is more deeply, mythologically ingrained into South African consciousness than most of its celebrities and cultural figures. He is folkloric. And yet the man seems to shrug at it all. Never seems to have acquired that aura of inaccessibility that even college bands nurture.
‘Plat oppie aarde, vonk innie oog’, that’s Koos.

God’s back-porch & ‘n huisie by die see – The literary flex.

Since the turning of the millennium, Kombuis has taken the time to re-indulge his literary energy. Besides his witty, weekly columns for Rapport, he’s ventured into the new form of full-length novels – following his autobiographical update ‘Seks en Drugs en Boeremusiek – Memoires van ‘n volksverraaier’ in 2000, he’s brought out everything from Sci-Fi (‘Paradise redecorated’ and ‘Hotel Atlantis’), to Thriller (‘Raka – The Novel’), to cheekily transcribing God’s diary entries in ‘The secret diary of God’. Whether in book-form, or riding a melody, it’s Kombuis’ words that resound..

Where most local Rock bands, and even Pop artists, rarely amass more than a wee handful of hits memorable enough to outlive their respective albums, Kombuis has enough to fill several. From out-and-out, canonic classics like ‘Lisa se klavier’, ‘Onder in my whiskey glas’, and ‘Kytie’, to strings of die-hard singalong tunes like ‘Ek is verslaaf’, ‘Johnny is nie dood nie’, ‘AWB Tiete’, and ‘Liefde uit die oude doos’, there are too many to mention here..
And while he’s found the autumnal peace of his ‘huisie by die see’, and Tassenberg no longer duets with him onstage, 2008’s ‘Bloedrivier’ – that romp-stomping, controversial, and critically-acclaimed State-of-the-Nation address - shows that the fire, the musical muse, and the winking court Jester still burn deep…

*********************

first published in muse magazine

Ours is a continent infused with magic and lore, there is an ancience to Africa that many have forgotten in their daily travels through spacetime and shopping malls. BLK JKS are effortlessly tapped into this knowledge. Stripping away the veneer of contemporaneity, with its capitalist prejudice and digital obsessions, the JKS make a music that straddles time as it does influence and culture - their heart is thumpingly South African, but their reach is everywhere. It’s as easy to imagine them reverently abiding the words of legendary sangoma Credo Mutwa; as being awed by a particularly intergalactic Eddie Hazel guitar solo; or admiring a devious percussive experiment by Aphex Twin.

BLK JKS wear mystery like a casual tee. They seem to permanently reside in that dusk time-zone where familiar objects are cast in a nebulic glow - transformed into Other. I ask co-founder and axe-slinger Mpumi Mcata whether the mysterious informs their experience of reality: “We come from Africa sir, the Mystical are always amongst us; some people say angels we say ancestors - these energies are everywhere - what an amazing thing…to be floating in out of space_we hope our music/After Robots in some way allows people to drop the distractions and just revel in the wonder of being - it’s the drug of all drugs; to be connected.”

While the media has latched onto the ‘Black guys playing Rock?’ surprise (tellingly omitting the likes of Fishbone and Living Colour - and, for that matter, the entirety of Funk - from memory), and reach for the most exciting blurb to box their ridiculously anticipated ‘After Robots’, BLK JKS’ music speaks for itself, and often in tongues.
Mpumi monosyllabically asserts BLK JKS’ attitude to all this, “‘After Robots’ rides/battles a rather tall wave of hype that’s been building since the Mystery EP, do you embrace this expectation?”, Mpumi: “No.”

The last year has been quite a ride, culminating in their full-length debut recorded in Jimi-drenched Electric Lady Studios NYC. The JKS had been making ripples abroad even before droppin their virally popular Mystery EP in March. The unexpected darlings of all the right music and culture zines, their waves have swollen to such dimensions that ‘After Robots’ clocked in a 78 on Metacritic, with glowing reviews from the likes of The Onion (A.V Club); Spin magazine and PopMatters - a significant splash for any outfit.

Mpumi was kind enough to exchange binary code with us, from the midst of the American leg of their ‘After Robots’ tour:

*Your songs often enter a kind of trance/invocational feel - is performing a spiritual sensation for you?
“Yes.”

*You guys seem to fit seamlessly into the Chimurenga fold (PASS etc.), do you enjoy their myriad endeavours?
“Indeed, those guys are amazing - Forwarding the Agenda…we’re totally into them_phambili ngo Mzabalazo!!!! - lots of good work being done by South African peoples right now, it’s so refreshing that after just over 10 yrs of “democracy” and “freedom” we’re coming into our own; not so much corporate cock blocking anymore - although it’s not all roses - we’re really getting over the crab-in-bucket stuff and holding each other up.”

*I-Pod or tape-deck?
“Record Player (Vinyl Deck)”

*What music/artists have been making you guys smile or nod-in-rhythm in the last coupla months?
“Well plenty - Mastadon… and we like Righard Kapp’s new album [’Strung like a compound eye’]; always swim back to Bheki Mseleku’s ‘Celebration’, and things like Baaba Maal and the Brazilian Girls’ get-together on his new album ‘Television’ etc.”

*It’s been something of a whirlwind since you guys hooked up with Diplo Stateside last year - what have been some highlights of your international adventures?
“Being on a bill that read Squarepusher and BLK JKS at South Bank in London, I mean when we saw that poster/////// it was a super gig, we played after him, we were the only acts and he brought a huge rig with Pink Floyd-style light and then struck it down when he was done and all that was left was three amps and a drumkit - a little bit of Wow!”

‘After Robots’ is happening all around you - it’s time to get onto the train, destination? BEYOND

[originally published in Muse magazine]

This ink is daunting. In preparation of teasing this feature into view, I am listening to ‘Bitches Brew’ for the first time in years. And the opening strains, instructively, and deceptively quietous (the proverbial ellipse preceding rupture), displace me: I am seventeen again, and I have unwittingly opened Pandora’s box by nothing more innocent than pressing ‘play’. I am unprepared for this shit. A new alphabet is at the door, and I’ve naively let it in.

‘Bitches Brew’ is one of those inspired works of art that can’t be over-praised, words literally pale. It is also one of those rare works - rare in any technical field of endeavour - that don’t date. This is a central characteristic of true, naked originality: To be so self-contained, so self-defined, as to bear no signs of its location in time. Miles Davis was quite a kerel; few today can dispute his gargantuan presence in 20th century music. He shared the insatiable, dionysian genius of that other creative giant, Picasso. By the 60’s Miles had already altered the currents of Jazz twice, re-introducing melody and space to the then-buzybee soloing era of Be-Bop, with his appropriately named ‘Birth of The Cool’ in 1950, and freeing Jazz from its ironically rigid chord-obsessions by spearheading modal Jazz, in what some have called the perfect sonic event: ‘A Kind of Blue’ (1959).

But Mr. Davis didn’t know about standing still. It was the late Sixties - Rock was hitting its second mighty crescendo; everybody and their tannie were opening the doors of perception; Funk was beaming into view; and Sex was tearing off its clothes. Times were stimulating. Miles was with a young beaut called Betty Mabry (who herself would turn out quite the motherfucker - hint, Mabry was her maiden name), whom Miles had recently pedestalled as his central muse, with the sonic gorgeousity of 68’s ‘Filles De Kilimanjaro’. Mrs. Davis (yes, THAT Betty Davis, underrated Funk Maestress ala ‘They say I’m different’) was very much of-the-scene at the time, and introduced Miles to the psychedelic punch of Hendrix and Sly Stone.
The deal was sealed. Jazz didn’t know it yet, but a bomb was about to go off, ironically cued by the hush of ’69’s ‘In a Silent Way’.

At the time of recording, Jazz was considered an art of the acoustic instrument. The handful of jazzos who dared explore electricity were seen as musicians using gadgets to disguise obvious lack of skill and finesse. Electric instruments were taboo, a vulgar crutch. Having tentatively insinuated electricity into 1968 recordings ‘Water Babies’ and the afore-mentioned ‘Filles’, Miles finally shrugged off the purist’s glare with ‘In a Silent Way’, a fully electric silence that preambled ‘Bitches Brew’.

But ‘Brew’ is a beast unto itself. AT LEAST two drummers, two bassists, and two horns are juggling sound at any given point in its timespace, resulting not in cacaphony, but blisteringly detailed sonic texture. Interestingly, the impression ‘Bitches Brew’ leaves in hindsight is that of storm, and slow-motioned explosions; but on actual listening, the stretches of sound are for the most part laid-back. There Are many bursts, many slashes of fever - especially in John McLaughlin’s staccato-pathic fretwork, which suggests the scrawls of mechanical arachni - but, ultimately, ‘Bitches Brew’ doesn’t flaunt its energy, its potency. Most of its space is a lazy stretching of musculature.

One of the first albums to hint at what would become Fusion and Jazz-rock - certainly the most influential - ‘Brew’ had Rock fans’ jaws clanking onto the floor. McLaughlin was a guitar revelation, and Miles showed that Jazz could do fire-and-brimstone as well as any stadium-straddling Rock outfit.
Also influential on the yet-to-be-born Electronica movement, ‘Bitches Brew’ is a crackling meditation more than an album - as ambient as Aphex Twin’s ‘Selected Ambient Works vol.2′, only an ambience of storm. Its production was also phenomenal. Opener ‘Pharao’s Dance’ alone contained 17 edits, with frequent loops and cut’n'pastes - unheard of at the time - producer Teo Macera wielding the studio like an instrument in itself.

Turbulence shaking hands with chill.
Darkly dazzling.

[first published in Muse magazine]

Kubrick meets King. Both critics and audiences had mixed reactions to Kubrick’s cold, spacious rendering of Stephen King’s bestseller, and his adaptation of the novel - but their qualms are exactly what, to me, make this a masterpiece of suspense. Source-material, much like actors, was merely a tool for Kubrick, a handy instrument to facilitate his vision.

From the opening credit-sequence we know we’re in for something different. The sky’s eye shot of giantess mountains and plunging ravine, surrounding the crisp calm of a vast lake, attain something very much beyond landscape status - voiced by Wendy Carlos’ ominous score the landscape is presented as an aloof, coldly malevolent intelligence: When we spot the speck that is the family car, carrying its unlucky contents toward their fate, it is no accident that it recalls the diminutive insignificance of an ant.

Perhaps more so than any director before him, Kubrick allowed his films’ soundtracks to be more than idle bystanders - before Kubrick music did lend emotive emphasis to key scenes, and served to coax audiences’ expectations and reactions.. but in his films the scenes are infused by the music, the scores lend body to his famously sparse visuals, sometimes claiming center stage. So intimately woven into Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’ is the music that it slips one’s conscious attention; it becomes a haunting, a visitation on one’s subconscious - where it goes about patiently notching up our discomfort, our paranoia. If its music is ‘The Shining’s central ghost, it’s other major character, unexpectedly, is not Jack Nicholson’s gleefully demoniacal eyebrows.. it is The Overlook Hotel - the ghost-town-in-a-building in whose menacing embrace the three main (living) characters find themselves trapped in.

His taking on of what was essentially a pop novel surprised many; but in fact Kubrick’s visual style (oft bemoaned by desperately smug critics) - cold, empty, veinless - was tailor-made to convey a ghost story. Rarely has such simple, innocent objects as a carpet, or tennis ball, caused quite as much squirming in seats. Additionally the movie seems to be stitched together by now-classic shots.

All three central performances are spot-on, with Shelly Duval (the wife) going so far as to mirror her character’s mental breakdown in real life (she barely survived filming, and took an extended break from acting after the experience), while Nicholson chompingly feasts on his script, no cutlery required.

A claustrophobic labyrinth; butler-fellated, lifesize teddybear; a psychopathic one-sentence novel; creepy twins; Room 237; and an ax. What more do you need?

[first published in Muse magazine]

“Things happen here about, they don’t tell about. I see things. You see, they say that it’s just an old man talking. You laugh at an old man, this thing that laughs and knows better.”

A pretty mundane line on page, the above - drunkenly spewed by some sun-blanched drunk towards the film’s beginning - depresses that little button that tells the audience, and Should’ve tipped the victims-to be, that this little Texan roadtrip is not to end in sunshine and flowers. Not that the title wasn’t to the point. Made on a shoe-string budget with mostly amateur actors (shot, then, like porn) this study in terror and dementedly human evil, is phenomenal. The only reason I’ve subjected myself to its visceral hysterics more than once, is that it contains moments that transcend into a kind of… poetics of evil.

There is more than a shiver of genius to this cinematic creature, specifically recalling that original sense of genius as being possessed by some higher consciousness. The soundtrack is unmatched - the sonic, the psychological, equivalent, of nails dragged across a chalkboard. The frequent citing of the sun, that profound entity of perpetual explosion and ungodly temperatures; the scattered logic of seriously twisted home-decorations; the morose consciousness of cattle awaiting slaughter; the (seemingly) arb comment about astrological tidings; and finally the sickeningly, senselessly sadistic reality of the cozy little killer family, seem to quest the bounds of ethicality. ‘Evil just is’. It seems to whisper into your ear. ‘Don’t blame it, don’t try to understand it. Just stay away.’

The film’s resident monster - the gibbering hulk Leatherface - launched the unfortunate careers of dime-a-dozen evil freaks with curious headgear, but the evilest evil lurks elsewhere in the movie…

Excepting the film’s centrepiece, where the unbroken shrieking momentarily re-introduces disbelief (for an ironic reason, since it Is realistic), this is inspired film-making, and, quite literally, breathtaking. But be warned, this be not placid fare.

At 21 years of age, Sasha Grey is living her dream of becoming all that she can be. Recently headlining director Steven Soderbergh’s (Traffic, Ocean’s Eleven) The Girlfriend Experience, a digital-age update of his ’89 indie hit Sex, Lies & Videotape, she’s buzzing across various media: The hungry focus of a Terry Richardson shoot; muse to Richard Kern’s recent, deliciously avant-garde Fashion spread in Vice magazine; appearing in music videos for The Smashing Pumpkins and The Roots; dropping guest-vox on Moby and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry tracks.. She fronts the band Atelecine, is the subject of two documentaries, and is penning her second novel. Mostly though, Ms Grey is something of a demonic force within the Porn industry. Touted as the next Jenna Jameson, she’s already notched up 140 films, but it’s not just her nubile velocity that’s brought both fame and infamy.

Appearing on a now-famous Tyra Banks Show episode, transparently entitled ‘Teenage prostitutes and porn stars’ in 2007, Sasha, a petite 18 years old, refused to submit to Tyra’s insistent labelling of her as victim, coolly asserting that she was doing exactly what she wanted to be doing, and calling the shots, which effectively threatened the message of that particular episode, and led to Banks visibly losing her cool. The enigma of Grey is a new phenomenon in the history of pornography, if only due to her audacious nature – she is the damsel consuming the dragon; if the knight wants to watch, that’s fine, if he wants to collapse into a morass of identity crisis and phallic alarm, that’s his deal. Her historical and philosophical precursor is the witch – long persecuted for enchanting and confounding the men-folk, for luring them away from their masculine obligations, and frolicking in content independence from their man-rules and man-authority. She threatens not only him, but is despised by his loyal, submissive women-folk (yes, we will be dipping into feminism later, no pun intended).

Sasha Grey’s mission statement (she has a mission statement), as outlined on her Myspace page, reads: “I am in the adult film scene for mainly one reason. On average, most of the xxx I see is boring, and does not arouse me physically, or visually. There is only a handful of adult stars that continue to push the boundaries of what women are supposed to like, or be like in bed. This entices me to be one of these young women, not to mention my lust for sexual creativity; I hunger for all modes of sexual perversity. I am determined and ready to be a commodity that fulfils everyone’s fantasies.”
Most porn actresses operate along the same quick-in, quick-out deadline as models, going at it hammer and tong for as long as their bodies make the cut, only to be unceremoniously spewed out by the eternally hungry, apathetic machine when a fresh line of fleshbots arrive. The lucky few retain enough of a cocktail of all-out sexiness and mystique (read as: they put off going all the sticky way for as long as they can, keeping their fans glued in the suspended hope of eventually seeing them go anal, or triple-entry, or whatever the latest peaks of exposure are) to stake their own space in the industry, ala Jenna Jameson, whose Jennaworld was purchased by Playboy for a cool $17 mill in 2002. Grey’s vision of her future is vast by comparison. She sees herself as an artist, with pornography as her central canvas, thereby neatly turning the tables, in an unprecedented way, on the machine. Twirling through taboos even as she explodes notions of identity and power, Sasha Grey is queen of her universe.
Thing is, Porn is essentially a male construct – the titillation is aimed at getting Joe Sofa on the couch there to knock one out; and so you have beautiful ladies (that’s the idea anyway) performing acrobatic debauchery on generic variations of Joe Sofa. The point of the exercise, outside of showing Joe mounds of gleaming, quivering she-flesh, is to get him off on the idea of unattainable women begging for it.. so drunk on desire that they would do anything if only he would bless her with that magic wand of his. All of which, at the end of the day, is kinda sad for all involved. And kinda un-sexy.

One of the reasons Sasha got into the industry was because she felt there was so much more to be explored; specifically with regards female sexuality, which is all-but-absent from your average porn flick. “I don’t need to see genitalia up close; I don’t need to see a dirty yellow couch against a white wall. I want to see something different, like, this is not exciting to me.” Grey has rather eloquently put the ball in her court, so to speak – in most of her scenes she’s pushing her male co-stars into territories they weren’t planning, or intending, on visiting, effectively reversing the traditional power-dynamic. When folks are appalled at her craving for controlled violence in sex, and her turn-on for non-reproductive bodily fluids, she points out that it’s a matter of, ahem, taste – it’s about what gets her off; to those who cry misogyny, she reminds that she is a young, independent, successful woman, and relishes in the power she wields in her shoots – Sasha Grey knows that the power of the female is essentially her mysterious force of attraction, be it explicit or obscure.

A quick peek into her list of personal heroes says it all – Jean Luc Godard, David Bowie, Catherine Breillat, Miles Davis, Jim Morisson. Individualists who broke through the boundaries to spill into the unknown. A brave girl in a jaded universe - Long may she spill!

It’s that time of year again! NewMusicSA, local branch of the International Society of Contemporary Music (ISCM), are gearing up for their 10th annual Music Indaba. Expect a feast of classical musics spanning different eras and cultures; with a special focus on contemporary forms, experimentation, and combining new South African musicians & compositions with renowned modern composers and international ensembles.

Central to NewMusicSA’s annual Indabas, is to explore meeting points and possible fusions between African musical forms and traditionally European classical structures, and to celebrate and nurture young South African composers - whilst affording them the opportunity to engage with established international performers and composers. We, the audience, are invited to glimpse these unique musical meetings; and to experience the thrill as musical ideas across the spectrum meet and combine to create something new, and get experienced live for the first time. A treasured aspect of the Music Indabas is their workshops: Here the audience gets to experience the behind-the-scenes processes of composition, arranging, and performance; while upcoming composers get to interact with international performers on different aspects of their work - at once a sharing of ideas, and fantastic learning opportunity for the young composers.

This year’s Indaba, which is to take place 1-4 October at Unisa’s main, and Sunnyside campuses, will feature local composers-in-residence Jurgen Brauninger and Hannes Taljaard. Performers will include internationally celebrated SA pianist Jill Richards; The Chamber Choir of South Africa, which has shared the stage with the likes of Sibongile Khumalo, Jonas Gwangwa and Johnny Mokoa; the Chamber Music Company, who have been called one of the most innovative and imaginative groups in the UK, and more.
Indaba 2009 will include concert programmes celebrating local great Kevin Volans’ 60th birthday; as well as a commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Haydn’s death; the music of avant-garde Tango legend Astor Piazzolla, and experimental pioneer Shostakovich will also be showcased. This in addition to their ‘Growing Composers’ programme, which will present works by emerging composers, exposing audiences to some of the latest music by the latest names in contemporary Classical music!

For reasons unknown, these wonderful annual festivals of musical excellence & exploration are not advertised with appropriate fanfare, making the Indabas something of a well-kept secret: Be sure to drop in for something unique and sonically invigorating. All lovers of Classical, Jazz, and World musics take note!

For more information and updates, visit www.newmusicsa.org.za and click on EVENTS

[First to find page-embrace in the upcoming edition of Rootz Africa magazine]

Pounced in flowers
she be
her lens bleeds
honey

The rules have changed. So much so, in fact, that they resemble something entirely different to rules and guidelines – the rules have transmogrified into something like ‘connect-the-Fun’ dots, and you can connect into whichever direction you imagine, at whatever metrical velocity. Genre? It was an illusion. Musicality? Twas just a hint. Ever since the digital fretboard and electroid canvas zapped onto the lips and fingertips of previously frustrated muso’s, whispering of uncharted vistas spilling over the edges of maps, Music has become so much more than it used to be. Add to this the exponential and un-checkable explosions of digital media and information, and you have artists who can metamorph at will, time-travel in the blink of a beat (and this while playing the visuals like they’re ringin’ a bell).

Enter SweatX, those coochie-poppin’ slap-and-beat-ticklers whose cult status in homeland belies rising popularity on the other sides of the oceans. Turning their tricks the other way round, glitch-enigma Markus Wormstorm and the irrepressibly merry Spoek Mathambo decided to squeeze the big time before claiming SA. Favourites abroad before they were rumours at home – minds you, that were before they tore up Cape Town’s hiney.

And of course, peering into the Funhouse mirror, all wobbly and a-sparkle, their reflection waves back as Playdoe, a gentler variant of themselves, whose ‘It’s that Beat’ and ‘Pop like this’ is going down all shiny in International clubland. Tongue-in-cheek to SweatX’s tongue-down-throat, Playdoe’s Spoek and Sibot splash down wormholes interconnecting mid-Eighties Hip-Hop, gleamy Electro-Pop and future-something. Sez Sibot: “Playdoe’s sound is a compromise of influences and future vision, it’s Spoek an I pushing each other into new exciting unexplored territory and arriving somewhere between Wine-gum samplers and Peanut butter raps.” What makes Playdoe happy? “A big crowd, a good sound engineer, a nice hotel, a bottle of whiskey, Scotland, Switzerland, Metz and………. dancing like a giraffe”

New Afro-Electro up&comer Gazelle, who joined SweatX on a collaborative European tour in May - “Basically planning to take over Europe with an African cultural coup d’etat” - have just released their ‘Chic Afrique’ album, with a sound founder Xander Ferreira dubs LimPop: “All the sounds I grew up to, from Ladysmith BM to Boney M basically forms part of this influence. The new material that we have been working on for the next album is much more traditionally rooted, something like a Graceland 3000 album…” Touring for ‘Chic Afrique’ kicked off late April nationally, before their European album-launch twirl.

On the Jozi side up there’s the mysterious cerebra of noise and relative Electronic conceits, The African Noise Foundation. Fused around the sound-design of muti-instrumentalist/multi-producer Joel Assaizky (Bunny Chow; Hard Copy) and meta-conducting of AK Thembeka, the Foundation is dedicated to re/locating and exploding Africa’s melodic distortion into song. Check out www.myspace.com/africannoisefoundation. “We promise nothing. We bring the Noise.”

And then there’s the multimediatics of MtKidu, whose graphic-albums trace the NuSeffrican-down-the-Rabbithole adventures of young KleinBaas, most recently through 2008’s SHAKAWON, meshing visual melodies and live comic strips to beats and bleeps, creating new musical narratives to stimulate your ears. Check out www.myspace.com/mtkidu for tracks, comic strips, and miscellaneous fun.

All and all, All be swell in the realms of Seffrican Lectronics!

[edited version first published in BPM magazine May/June]

Palm pictures’ ‘The Work of Director’ is a series of dvd’s that showcase innovators behind the lens of music videos. Thanks in no small part to the roster of seven directors in this series, music videos have become increasingly creative, even - Pop forbid! - artful. We zoom in on two of the more extremely original of the bunch..

Frenchman Michel Gondry is one-of-a-kind. Stuck, by own admission, at the wide-eyed age of 12, he is the son of an inventor, and experiences the world with wonderstruck awe. Gondry never even knew there was a box to think outside of. In keeping with his childly nature, and inventive blood, Michel’s works seem to be attempts at matching the sheer mystery the world presents him with - through Michel’s eyes life is a kaleidoscopic series of head-scratch inducing tricks; mind-teasing illusions by the Master illusionist. And of course there’s nothing more challenging, or enjoyable, than out-tricking the Master!

If his quirky name doesn’t ring a bell (mind you, his subsequent ventures into the longer tricks called Movies should - he brought us ‘Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind’, and ‘The Science of sleep’), a quick sample of quintessentially Gondrian images might: A giant grizzly Teddy tearing through cardboard forests on a soccer-ball sized earth, hunting Bjorkie; The White Stripes’ multiplying drum-kits and amps in ‘The Hardest button to button’; Beck carrying a car; and the famous Foo Fighters fable ‘Everlast’, involving Grohl’s giantized hands rescuing the drummer in dis-dress.

‘The Work of Director vol.3 - Michel Gondry’ is crammed to bursting point with the man’s naive genius, Gondry’s videos are unsolveable puzzles, and his greatest virtue is his love of sets; physically constructed illusions and effects embody his videography in favour of the cool, inorganic sheen of CGI. Even more peculiar and rewarding than the numerous vids - to this reviewer at least - are the various documentaries, shorts and interviews that further explore the brilliant, oddball mind that is Gondry.

Come to Daddy..

‘The Work of Director vol.2′ captures the dark inventions of Chris Cunningham. Tellingly, where Gondry repeatedly draws Bjork and The White Stripes into his dazzling playgrounds, Cunningham mostly hangs out with Aphex Twin and Squarepusher, at night.

Invited at 24 to be animatronics & effects supervisor on no-less than Kubrick’s ‘A.I.’ sets (no, not Spielberg: the original, abandoned Kubrick pre-production - ah what could have been!), Cunningham’s always been a force to be reckoned with - exploding onto the scene with the magnificently frightening ‘Come to Daddy’ ala Aphex, he was swiftly being called up by the who’s-who of the music world, but restricted himself to projects he felt passionate about. From the liquid gothic dream of Portishead’s ‘Only you’ to the New York-cracked zombie of Leftfield/Africa Bambaata colab ‘Africa shox’, Cunningham always defies expectation. His masterwork is possibly Aphex Twin’s ‘Windowlicker’, where he singlehandedly perverts the entire Bling-bling culture of Hip-Hop videos and MTV-land: Sheer, eerie genius in motion! As with Gondry’s package, ‘vol.2′ comes with illuminating interviews, extras, and a fantastic 52 page booklet.

Five-minute explosions of art and experiment - must-have stuff!
Check out www.directorslabel.com for more visceral info.

[originally published in Muse magazine]

the reverie review text is by mick raubenheimer

Etymology and application of the term, Architecture

The word “architecture” comes from the Latin, “architectura” and ultimately from Greek, “arkitekton”, αρχιτεκτων, an architect, or more precisely “master builder”, from the combination of αρχι a “chief” or “leader” and τεκτων, a “builder” or “carpenter.

While the primary application of the word “architecture” pertains to the built environment, by extension, the term has come to denote the art and discipline of creating an actual, or inferring an implied or apparent plan of any complex object or system. The term can be used to connote the implied architecture of abstract things such as music or mathematics, the apparent architecture of natural things, such as geological formations or the structure of biological cells, or explicitly planned architectures of human-made things such as software, computers, enterprises, and databases, in addition to buildings. In every usage, an architecture may be seen as a subjective mapping from a human perspective (that of the user in the case of abstract or physical artifacts) to the elements or component of some kind of structure or system, which preserves the relationships among the elements or components.

The long-reigning king of the American bizarre. Nothing needs be said to introduce the man’s work – his name is a genre unto itself, immediately conjuring up those unhinged, paranoid, disturbedly beautiful fever-scapes so peculiar to him.
Besides the unprecedented employment of sound, the canonical images, and the sheer genius of his masterworks, his greatest contribution to American cinema is perhaps that, with Lynch, viewers finally got hold of the notion that you don’t have to understand a film to appreciate its beauty; that film doesn’t have to make itself understood. Before Lynch films could be weird, but they had to make sense - the ‘weird’ had to be qualified somehow, contextualised, patted on the head. ‘Eraserhead’ (Lynch’s debut feature film) completely exploded that quaint rule.

‘The short films of David Lynch Vol.1’ is indispensable to anyone interested in experimental cinema in general, and Lynch in particular.. Starting with his film-student works, the collection traces the painter becoming the director, then leads into the mid-70s shorts that would contain some of the sparks and cues destined to become central to his cinematic art. Appendixed is Lynch’s 55-second contribution to Lumiere et compagnie.

From a little boy growing his own grandma in the attic; to alphabetic nightmares and concertos of vomiting heads; a dull lady auto-dictating letters while her amputated legs retch gunk; and indescribably deeper into Lynch’s labyrinthine trip of a mind, these shorts make most of his eventual films rate PG on the Bonkers scale.

First published in Muse magazine

Godfather of local electronica, Warrick Sony aka The Kalahari Surfers, needs no introduction. Following his musical rebirth in 2000 Sony has gifted us his epiphanic masterpiece ‘Akasic Record’ (2000), all mystery and dreamy elegance, followed by the more upbeat, bass-driven ‘Muti media’ (2003) and the excellent ‘Panga management’ (2007); this in addition to 2003’s trance outing through Microdot Records, ‘Conspiracy of Silence’.

While all this was going on, a great, unreleased collaboration was coming to life in the shadows. Sony gives us a peek into the makings of what sounds to be a magnificent beast. As he put it: “ex-ORB Greg Hunter and Kris Weston vs. me and Brendan Jury. Unlimited budget and never finished – began in 1998 and a version finished now. 2 continents, self-flagellation, yoga and the beach!”

Warrick’s low-down: “[MELT2000’s Robert Trunz] suggested a collaboration [between Trans.Sky, comprising Warrick Sony and Brendan Jury, and] his favourite producer Greg Hunter, who at that point was finishing off his ‘Alien Soap Opera’ project and decided to swop freezing London for a particularly fantastic Cape Town summer.
‘Turntabla’ began in the summer of 1998 at what was then Shifty Studios in Camp Street, Cape Town. Greg fell in love with a Berimbau I bought when I was in Brazil, and worked on it day and night until he was shitfuckn hot on it. Brendan did string stuff on his viola and processed viola. We were jamming with piano, tabla, viola, veena, berimbau, mridangam, turntables, udu pots.. We even went out and bought and old Wurlitzer church organ for the bass pedals – I’ve never had so much fun in a recording. I think we all did.”

Following the initial swell of inspiration the project was dormant for two years, with Hunter and Weston back in the UK and other key conspirator Brendan Jury moving to Joburg. “Greg returned in 2000 and we finished the album at Milestone [studios], blowing all their main studio speakers in the process. This was a very productive period and the album shifted from the very synthesized sound to more organic; Greg taking control and shaping performances from myself, Madala Kunene, and a string quartet for 2 of the tracks.”

“The album lay around for a decade until Robert Trunz asked me if I wouldn’t mind doing some of my own mixes - a sort of remix of an album that never was. I returned to the album, found amazing performances [to replace some uncleared samples] that we’d done ourselves, and some great Madala Kunene guitar.. and so I reworked 3 quarters of the album.”
With Greg Hunter and Warrick Sony as inter-successive heads of this decade-spun project, and all the heady, exotic ingredients in the mix, I can’t wait to wrap my ears around this one!

[’TURNTABLA’ is out now - go to www.electricmelt.com]

(Turntabla:) First published in BPM magazine

Nice evolutionary flip – Scientist takes drugs, turns into caveman (and then into.. I don’t know what that was..) This deliciously over-the-top witch’s brew sees director Ken Russell, frequent explorer of the grotesque and the strange, the weird and hysterical (‘Tommy’, ‘The Devils’, ‘Gothic’), venture into occult strata of intellectual and genetic sub-consciousness. The film follows mad-monk-as-raging-scientist Eddie Jessup’s increasingly precarious and otherwordly investigations into altered states, via isolation tanks and potent hallucinogens. Jessup’s (William Hurt in a potent screen debut) academic studies into schizophrenia has led him to believe that patients’ delusional episodes are just as viable to their empirical reality as their supposedly sane ones; he projects this idea onto the notion of genetic memory – suspecting that our earlier evolutionary manifestations still lurk inside us as latent, limboid realities, which can be re-manifested.

Stumbling onto a Peyote-esque psychotropic in Mexico - which, the shaman warn him, transports the user back to the dawn of being - Jessup proceeds to ride the drug into the void, with mind-shattering consequences as his body and consciousness get warped into various incarnations, from neanderthal to quasi-cellular thing, and back.

Essentially a 20th century take on the various alchemic and faustian legends, ‘Altered States’ takes full advantage of its time – the characters still live in heady proximity to the age of free love and psychedelia, while Russell exploits to the hilt then-current developments in special effects. An entirely unique film, it moves self-consciously (and with the occasional reflexive snicker) through sci-fi, horror, drama, romance and farce, somehow sustaining uniformly great acting and dialogue while all hell erupts via some of the most impressive and unnerving visuals yet committed to celluloid. A must see!

*****
[originally published in Muse magazine]

Funny thing with comedy – despite being generally associated with knee-jerk laughter at some silly spectacle, a thoughtless reflex – is that at its sharpest, comedy is a revelation of intelligence. Bill Hicks’ routines were like a workshop on perception – one where the audience gets to see him toppling ogres of stupidity. He was also ridiculously funny, one of that rare breed of comedian whose work qualified as art. Where jokes and sketches generally have short, built-in life-spans, Hicks’ material is almost inexhaustibly re-listenable. The shit just gets funnier. He was also, quite possibly, comedy’s most Rock ’n Roll figure – okay, so Richard Pryor grew up in a brothel and set himself on fire during a cocaine-fuelled moment of psychosis, but Hicks at his best was a walking-talking M-16 assault on the authorities, and king of the conceptual middle finger; he also tore The New Kids On The Block, MC Hammer, and Vanilla Ice apart at every opportunity, and took delight in standing up for the positive aspects of recreational drugs (“I have taken drugs before and… I had a really good time. Sorry.”) And was something of a prophet.

Born in Georgia in 1961, Hicks grew up in a highly conservative, Bible-belt style family, who unknowingly gave him years worth of material. A natural stand-up, he was the official class clown; as a teen he and best friend Dwight Slade sneaked out of their homes and into the comedy circuit, where he soon built up a modest following. Hicks had a natural talent for viewing the world askew, and noting faults and inconsistencies in the grand design which others couldn’t even imagine; early and passionate experiments with magic mushrooms also exposed him to increasingly unconventional perspectives on this, that and the other. Mind you, Hicks gave up drugs, and never advocated their use – his central concern having always been truth (and the epic misrepresentations of truth otherwise known as human history), he unfailingly stood up for that which was suppressed or silenced, and slit hypocrisy’s neck wherever his words found it (which was all over the place) – be it America’s denunciation of marijuana whilst gulping down Budweiser; or her dubious relationship to ‘terrorist’ Iraqi’s, whom she, in fact, armed; or the peculiar sentiment of Christians wearing crosses around their necks (“Kinda like walking up to Jackie Onassis with a rifle pendant on.. Just thinkin’ of John, Jackie, just thinkin’ of John..”)
Fearless in his uncompromising stance, Hicks sometimes alienated even his audiences with his views, most notably in the American South, where he never shied from lambasting the Redneck world-view, Creationists (“Ever notice how Creationists look really un-evolved..?”), and other side-effects of long-term inbreeding. Like many of the greats, in whatever field, he wasn’t well-known while he was still breathing – appropriately enough, he had quite a following in the UK, where audiences appreciated irony above slapstick, and were more politically critical than the Americana.
And it was when tackling politics that Hicks’ gifts really shone – listening to his extensive skits on the early-90’s Gulf War today, more than a decade on, he might as well be dissecting the American politics of the second Bush administration; and his then seemingly-exaggerated takes on America’s foreign policies are goose-bumpily accurate on the post-9/11 era (pre-Obama).
Ultimately Bill Hicks, for all his hilarious rage, was deeply concerned about humanity, and, like Frank Zappa, was dismayed that stupidity seemed to be the building-block of the universe. And so he stood up, proudly, and well-armed, against this vast beast called Dumb, and did his bit to take it down.

[originally published in Muse magazine]

The Muse gazed down wetly on the earth
The little boy who once
had leapt and fooled
to please her
Had grown up to crush skulls
and line the sky
with the innards of his neighbours

The little boy had grown up in thrall of a different muse
sinister, pathetic, and jealous

The Muse quietly shook her head
closed her eyes

All of this violence

indeed Alll
can be
simply

de-meta-post-philosophically
assuaged as

Man’s childish hunger
for peace…

Man’s hunger for the pink hand-shake…

(she secret snickers)

in the moment of creation i inhale soaring beams
collapse within
they burst without

The idea of her
wondered at the idea of my cock
its girth and thrust
my idea of me
fantasized the fragrance of spasm
between her thighs
the scent of the idea of her calves
the textural moisture of her tongued
mouth, an idea

The idea of we
anticipated curious, primordially
distracted conversations
and silly laughter
and waking together
to the idea of morning,
stirring oneother
back to flesh

The idea of we
entwined
is transformative