Biting off all I can chew and choosing a few with what is making my ears prick up in the SA music scene.
These artists provide such damn good information, I feel like not devoting a whole article to each one is akin to licking the dots off a ladybug; you realise you kinda want to eat the whole thing. Anyway, here are my current three favourite music makers to look out for. Matthew Fink, one part of The Black Hotels and one of the originators of cool if you know anything of Durban back when it was like L.A. on Astros and The Station night club was thumping.
Witchboy is probably the most innovative creature South Africa has seen this side of a sequin and peanut butter samie. Welcome Space Cadet! Last but not least are The Coals Of Juniper who give us their 5 cents on what’s up right now whilst winding up reminding me of that nursery rhyme, Winkin, Blinkin and Nod…
I’m kind of in to the whole aesthetic of a thing and trying to picture what a sound would look like if it was a room or place or person etc. What does Witchboy’s sound look like in this context?
Since Hollymode is probably coming out first I’ll describe its room…
The Room was as big as the world. In a corner were three tables with three chairs each. The blackness around them carried with it all the momentum of drawn stage curtains. Marylin glanced at her Mickey Mouse watch. Three hundred years had passed since Marylin had tabled this Room world. It only took a minute to lay a floor. She shrugged the shoulders of her shine-bright vinyl.
“Room to breathe,” she thought out loud, tapping her wingtips above the scuffed linoleum.
But the sound went nowhere. It simply hovered about like an ominous vulture. She eyed the sentence as it resounded menacingly over the chipped formica tables. She had to restrain an urge to slap herself for speaking – fearful as she was of echoes. ‘This joint really needs some music,’ she thought.
And even she didn’t know why the shoulder pads on her suit were so big. Her vinyl hair gleamed, but you couldn’t tell from where the light source originated. A chrome announcer’s microphone on a vintage stand solved the sound problem. She cleared her throat and speaker systems relayed out into space.
(Erm…that was amazing.)
So you’re releasing Hollymode this year. What IS that?
Well, Hollymode is a theme album. It’s a retro concept which lent itself to the more expansive prog rock albums and one which hasn’t been in vogue lately because albums had been getting all ‘smallified’ to suit commercial viability.
Of course all that’s changed with the internet and sites like bandcamp.com allow one to go back to retro in a futuristic way.
So with Hollymode I am going for the whole cartoonification of Hollywood in all its sleazy, gory glory. I grew up (like all of you probably) watching cheap movies set in LA and felt that the reality in films like Repo Man and Terminator were in many ways more real than the actual reality of Hollywood.
I felt that all this could be married into a sort of Billy Wilder on crack concept album. The result is a diverse array of songs sniping at movie universes, false prophets selling shamballa to housewives, HP Lovecraft rap, sex droid cyber-hop, futurist vestron video confessions, plastic candy doll gutted on neon beaches at sunset, zero-g parties in space stations, Laura Palmer etc. I also wanted to try break the mould with the music a bit and in fact only three tracks involve sequencing.
The rest is basically live electronics – even the drums are tapped out! So the music is live and free of BPM constrictions. I thought this musical approach would suit the organic kaleidoscopic intensity of my biblical visions of an all encompassing mode which all of us are familiar with. A mode which remains mystical and magical even though it is the cheapest form of lumo bubblegum that ever got stuck under your leopard print spike heel.
What was the first album you ever bought/borrowed/stole?
I bought NWA’s Straight Outta Compton in London when it was still banned in SA. Then I made black-market tapes and flooded the freak circuit at school.
4 favey faves right now?
These are my top 4 right now songs – :
Crave – Young
Iggy Azalea – Pussy
Nattymari – Strob3lit3
Eternity Zone – Popshop
Matthew Fink of The Black Hotels
Could you tell me a little bit about the early days of The Station?
I was barely 19. The Station had been open for 2 weeks when I got chatting to club founder and legendary Durban DJ, Richard Every. He asked if I would spin some records for a few minutes while he went to the bar. He returned 2 hours later and I had myself a residency for the rest of the clubs existence. The patrons were an eclectic mix of Durban’s underground youth having way too much of a good time.
Best moments:
Any time that Live Jimi Presley were in town for a performance.
Epic fail moment:
Accidently setting the DJ box alight and damaging all the equipment with a fire extinguisher.
What was the first album you ever bought/borrowed/stole?
It was a gift from a family friend: Adam & The Ants Prince Charming 7″ (B/W Christian Dior)
The Black Hotels have recently brought out your well received new album, Honey Badger. Tell us a bit about where you were going with this one.
With Honey Badger we made a conscious decision to create a new sound within the band. For my part I ditched the vintage Fender Rhodes & Hammond organ tones for harder driving synthesizers.
To a degree the album takes influence from music we were listening to at the time of writing and recording.
While Honey Badger sounds nothing like The National, Arcade Fire, XX, LCD Soundsystem or Interpol, I’m sure that the then current albums by those artists were a subconscious creative catalyst.
Coals Of Juniper
I’m kind of in to the whole aesthetic of a thing and trying to picture what a sound would look like if it was a room or place or person etc. What does the Coals Of Juniper sound look like in this context?
Jono: Ha-ha! This is going to get strange! We mostly look like two Indians and a White guy. Kidding, kind of. I think our sound doesn’t hold its form for too long, it’s continually transforming or morphing into its next shape. We like to think it transports you.
Joel: Like think of a 60’s muscle car being driven in the scorching desert by you, now rain is tapping at your window, then you’re in a thunderous storm, now suddenly a calm landscape.
Jude: And every colour swirls in strange unison as a fat lady becomes weightless and jumps in slow-mo on the moon eating an ice-cream.
Jono: Then its coffee machines and washing machines, bashed down doors and fists in the air. And maybe imagine singing too, because we don’t. And then maybe you wake up and come back to reality.
What was the first album you ever bought/borrowed/stole?
Jono: Tree’s Overflow, on cassette tape. Yes, before they became Tree63.
Joel: House Anthems Vol. 2. It was long ago!
Jude: Keith J. He was a local Indian rapper I think…
4 favey faves right now?
(Discussion and arguing ensues)
Jono: Okay, here it is. R. Kelly, Kesha, Beyonce, 50 Cent.
Joel: He’s just joking. Seriously
Jude: Here’s the real list: Radiohead, Soundgarden, Hiromi Uehara, and Isochronous.
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