Genres are a necessary evil. The good ones help us organise music, so that if we want music with a particular kind of rhythm and melody we need only to look at artists in that genre to find something we probably will like. Think Funk, Reggae, Hip Hop, etc. The bad ones however just confuse you. Experimental is probably right at the top of the list of meaningless genres. By labeling music as experimental you simply acknowledge that it doesn’t follow any conventional musical paradigm, nothing more. Experimental music can range from deep droning synthscapes that seem to continue ad infinitum to raging guitars squealing in terror. In some cases it is possible to use experimental as a qualifier, as in, experimental hip hop. In some cases however experimental is the perfect tag for the music. Pretoria based The Watermark High is experimental and their debut album Loneliness As An Art Form is their experiment.

The Watermark High – “Love Made Code” Music Video from The Watermark High on Vimeo.

Read the rest of the review and grab the free downloads after the jump!

Combining both sampled and synthesised drums, the rhythmic base for the music is at times simple and straight rock, at others intricatetly programmed and very much electronic. The vocals throughout the album are gentle and linger within the melodies created by accoustic guitars, paino and synths.  If you could touch music, this would feel soft and fuzzy. Like a teddybear or … soft fuzz.  Guiding one through tracks are the soft drones of synth pads which adds to but also ties together the tracks.

I don’t need Serotonin is for me the stand-out track on the album, with it’s epic instrumental build-up which makes the second part featuing vocals feel like a different song.

As a whole the tracks on this album come together to form an aural entity that can be described as greater than the sum of it’s parts, as the saying goes. Cheesey saying or not, the album is cohesive thanks to the songs on it. No matter where I go, I end up me is a good example of one of those tracks which transforms itself from a crazy drum led piece to a simple melodic one.

To pick up the metaphor where we left off, if Loneliness As An Art Form is an experiment, then it surely is a success. Beautiful and at times haunting, the music on this album is not harsh but never dull. With this album The Watermark High has revealed its intent to create some of the most interresting electro-accoustic music that is being produced in South Africa today.

Finally, in today’s digital world one always needs a compelling reason to purchase music on physical media. The packaging for Loneliness As An Art Form is perhaps as beautiful as the music, with just as much attention to detail.  You can get your copy at shows as they are very limited in numbers, alternatively you can grab a free download of the album from the bands website (for a limited time only!)… www.thewatermarkhigh.co.za!

Technorati Tags: The Watermark High, Loneliness As An Art From, I Don’t Need Serotonin, No Matter Where I Go, I End Up Me

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‘Shakawon’, the second offering from Jozi based Mtkidu, continues the groups’ efforts to change the way music is created and performed. This is primarily done by combining visual elements with the music, which enhance the stories told rather than simply offer a pretty distraction during live shows.

This audio-visual combination is carried onto their album which features an interactive multimedia element when it is inserted into your computer. Apart from the links, downloads, press pics and info that give you some insight into the world of MtKidu, there is also a comic, each page of which is tied to a track from the album and which tells a story that links the tracks on the album together.

Full review and song downloads after the jump!

The ever evolving sound of MtKidu is evident when comparing this album to their first release. The music on ‘Shakawon’ is more cohesive and accessible; however there is still no danger that it is overly commercial. The line from Chains “don’t give a fuck about records sold” best sums up MtKidu’s attitude towards music. The produce music because they like it and want to push the boundaries of what is possible, not to make millions, buy cars and bling and show off their houses on MTV Cribs…

On to the music. The album opens with the dreamy, aptly entitled Lulluby [sic]. I love Zulu girls is definitely a crowd favourite. It is a slow burner with a grinding bassline, a sharp saw-toothed synth and pounding kick drum, which by the time the chorus hits has most of the kids in the club jumping. Tokoloshi Two Step is more ‘bouncy’ and features the dirty synth sounds for which MtKidu are so well known. Shadow Nation has more of a break-beat. A personal favourite, Walk through Joburg, is a bass heavy track that gets your head nodding from the get-go. She talks in the dark has a strong surreal element, while the beautiful Forest Song is slightly touched by sadness. The album closes with the super fun Kool Klone Kid, another favourite of mine.

All in the album covers a large variety of emotions, rather than ‘genres’. The 11 tracks that form the album are a solid selection, which is further contextualised by the above mentioned comic. MtKidu have come a long way since playing in the basement of Horror Café at Secret Parties. If you love MtKidu, you will love this album. If you’ve never heard of MtKidu, but like music that doesn’t follow the same formula that is found in most genres’ I recommend checking it out. You can get the album at MtKidu live shows and you can order it through their website.

Since everybody loves this one
MTKidu - I Love Zulu Girls

And ’cause i love this one even more
MtKidu - Kool Klone Kid

As part of their album launch, they got several artists to interpret their songs. Below are to of these ‘covers’: The first is by Givan Lötz, who takes I love Zulu girls and changes into an acoustic guitar based folksy-buskeresque song.

Ola Kobak takes the already beautiful and sad Forest Song and makes it even more so, creating a piano based ballad, which is bound to give you goose bumps.

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Currently rapping up their tour of Europe, Gazelle is bound to stir things up both nationally and around the world. Consisting of Xander Ferreira and Nick Matthews, Gazelle are uniquely South African and yet strangely familiar. CHic AFrique is both a product of Xander’s rural Limpopo upbringing and a range of influence including 1970s Nigerian Disco Funk, ragga and electro pop. Mixed together this forms what they calls ‘Limpop’.

The sounds of rural Limpopo and traditional South Africa feature on tracks such as the opening track ‘Barbarella’, ‘Neondebele’, the end of ‘Die Verlore Seun’ and the playful song ‘Try’. His ragga roots can be found in tracks such as bouncy ‘Chic Afrique’ from which the album draws its name, the slightly darker, deep and bassy ‘Just Now’ which features Weez and the above ‘Neondebele’. Songs such as ‘Options’, ‘She Did Me In’, ‘Strange Things’ and ‘Golden Sun’ lean towards disco funk and electro pop, creating catchy bass vibes along with fun synthy melodies.

It is refreshing and apparent that Gazelle do not take themselves too seriously. This is evident not only in Cold-War era African Dictator get-up worn by Xander but also in tracks such as the semi-autobiographical ‘Die Verlore Seun’, which talks of a boy leaving his home farm for the lights of the disco found in the big city and in the hidden track at the end which I shall dub ‘Die Durban se Jaarlikse Poepwedstryd’ which, as the name implies, covers a (fictional I hope!) annual farting competition.

The album covers a variety of sounds, yet remains a coherent entity thanks to the unmistakable lazy voice and song writing found on the record. The album will be available in Musica and Look & Listen soon, along with a number of your favourite independent record stores nation wide. I recommend you grab a copy of what I suspect is one of South Africa’s most underrated groups.

Check the Downloads Section for a taste of their music and just because I know you guys love it so much, grab Die Verlore Seun below. This is a promotional download only available until Saturday!

Gazelle – Die Verlore Seun

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Listening to ‘Errors of Enthusiasm’ one gets the impression that there is a major influence is derived from Rock (and perhaps even a bit of Roll). This is conveyed through the use of live drums in the recording of the tracks along with the electronic drums adding to the overall beat rather than forming the main focus. Another strong element in the music is guitar which can be heard in many of the tracks on this album including the opening track ‘Mechanism of the Universe’, ‘Roll under Milk Wood’ and ‘The Perfectionist’.

Some of the more synth driven, electronic tracks such as ‘Supercilious’, ‘A Quiet Separation’ and ‘Ag Club (An Unconscious Celebration)’ seem to have more of a down-tempo feel to them. The vocals on this album are drawn out and have an ethereal feel to them, which gives many of the tracks an almost ballad like quality. ‘You’ll Poly Die!’ and the first single off the album ‘Lines and Colours’ have a more electro-pop like quality to them which adds to the overall diversity of the album. It’s a pity that ‘Lines and Colours’ is not getting the airplay it deserves simply because of a cocaine reference.

Overall this album is as diverse as it is well-rounded. Yesterday’s Pupil has a sound that is entirely his own and yet is strangely familiar. Capturing the energy of his live shows is no easy feat and while nothing can ever compare to seeing an artist live on stage, this album does deliver. For those that have seen his live show, this album will not disappoint, while those unfamiliar with his music and who crave electronic music with something a little different will no doubt enjoy it as well.

While we don’t have any of his tracks for you to sample you can get the Haezer remix of ‘You’ll Poly Die’ in our Downloads section and you can watch the music video for ‘Lines and Colours’ here.

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Where: The Woods, 66 Carr Street, Newtown

Cost: R30

SL mag’s Student Night’s at the Woods presents these two rad and rocking bands:

The Shadowclub

Voodoo Child

And then Rich III on the decks and his friend from Cape Town, Binary who is one of the top Dubstep DJs from the Mother City and a regular feature at Step Up, the biggest Dubstep party in Africa quite possibly.

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As mentioned in our previous post, Richard the Third has released his debut album entitled Third World from the Sun. The album contains previously released tracks as well as brand new ones. Read the full review after the jump!

The track How can you tell? featuring Bride Reunion is the number one downloaded track here. You may have also heard Flux Capacitor on his MySpace page, which is one of my favourite songs on the album. It has the feel of New Order with a 2008 twist. Dancing with the DJs girl which features the vocals of Shane from Desmond and the Tutus is his most recently released track and is also available for download on our site. It features that deep squelchy bass that we love so much and should be a big hit this summer with the party kids!

The album starts hard and winds down to more chilled out electronica. It is just under 44 minutes long which I consider to be the perfect length for an album. Blast em into orbit is another great track which features samples of speech on electronic music from what I can tell. What I also like is that he has collaborated with a number of other artists such as Themba January on Soul Trader and Michelle Freeman on Haunt.

The album is an amazing journey from the dance floor to your car on your way home at 4am. Richard the Third has produced something awesome and the fact that he is offering it to anybody who asks is great! All I can say is go out and get this album. You will not be disappointed. In the mean time check out our downloads section to get a taste of what to expect!

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It’s about damn time that local books started getting the publicity that they deserve. Honestly, if Bryce Courtney is a South African writer, then I’m part of Jamaica’s Cool Runnings bobsled team. Lauren Beukes is a pretty talented lady. She’s the chief writing force behind the award winning URBO: The Adventures of Pax Afrika, a featured columnist for Cape Town’s Big Issue and has also released an eye opening book called Maverick, dealing with some radical, both good and bad, women from South Africa’s past.

Moxyland, her first novel, centers around four young adults trying to get by in a dystopian Cape Town set in the near future. It’s Apartheid all over again, although this time the lines are drawn between economic classes rather than race.

Read all about the soundtrack after the jump!

It’s a gritty, darkly humorous look at corporate Big Brothers deciding our every move and will appeal to any kid who likes anything ranging from Palahniuk-esqe graphic descriptions to those who love the whodunit genre.

Moxyland is an enthusiasts dream; the launch was abuzz with fake protesters and evidence of sinister experiments, as well as awesome Moxyland toys. These toys are super sweet and the best thing about them is that R100 from each toy sale goes straight to the underprivileged women who make them. This makes me feel warm and fuzzy, just like the toys.

On the 7^th of July, the official Moxyland soundtrack was released through African Dope, one of Cape Town and South Africa’s oldest and biggest driving forces behind electronic music. These guys were behind the totally rad Constructus Corporation double disc/graphic novel release, ‘The Ziggurat’, and also hosted one of the dopest acts around, The Real Estate Agents.

Beukes got together with Honey B of African Dope to compile the album and it fits with the novels uncanny sense of unease. Tracks range from the dark, noize assault of Jacob Israel, one of South Africa’s bright new stars on the scene, to Cape Town’s ever-popular rock machines, Taxi Violence.

After one listen, you can tell the soundtrack was put together with great care. Certain tracks like Mix n Blend’s ‘Beautiful’ (a fitting title if ever there was) and Mr Gelatine’s ‘Frank’ take you to another place. I can’t stress enough how keen I am to hear more of these two acts. I was also super stoked to hear two of Jacob Israel’s tracks on the release. This guy is incredibly talented and, except for two digital releases, I haven’t seen or heard of his tracks on anything but an SL or two.

As well as new tracks that are sure to cause a stir in clubs and studios around the country, crowd-pleasing favourites have been also been included on the soundtrack. These include my personal favorite version of ‘Super Evil’, The Real Estate Agents’ Pizzas Mix, Pug (Lagos Disco Machine) who’s track ‘Pornography’, was a favorite on African Dope’s awesome release, Cape of Good Dope, and African Dope founders, Krushed & Sorted whose track ‘King Of The Swingers’ is mixed by none other than Animal Chin of Homegrown and Counterstrike fame.

It’s pretty unfortunate, though, that when compiling a soundtrack, there are generally a few tracks that just don’t fit in quite as well as the others. For me this is Damn Right’s ‘Kreature’. It’s just nothing special and doesn’t flow with the book or album. This can also be said for Taxi Violence. Even though ‘Question X’ is an awesome song from an even more awesome album, it just doesn’t glue with the other more electronic tracks.

Besides the two above mentioned tracks, the album flows incredibly well. In fact I haven’t heard a compilation go down so well since Garden State. Don’t mention Juno. It sucks, okay?

The majority of tracks on this album haven’t been released before, so if you’re keen to get your hands on some of African Dope’s lesser known, but equally infectious gems then be sure to get yourself down to a store soon, word on the street is that it’s selling faster than koeksisters at a NG Kerk Bazaar.

Jason D over and out!

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[image via Outlaw Design Blog]

So we’ve been quietly plotting things, which meant that the blogging side of things were on the back burner. Sorry about that, but these things happen. The good news is that in some new an exciting stuff will be happing from our side soon, which we hope you kids will dig! In the mean time, why not download a few tracks from the music we’ve been listening too and let us know what you think!

Berlin’s queen of minimal, Ellen Alien, has just released her new album Sool, which is described as “subtle and misterious”. This album is quite different to her previous release which featured Apparat and was almost ‘minimal-pop’. Sool is darker and remeniscent of the Ellen Alien of old, while still managing to be something unique. The track Bim is a good example. Click here to download [via XLR8R]. Visit the BPitch Control page to stream and/or buy the album.

Another German release, this time on Gomma, longtime ET favourite Munk just brought out cloudbuster. The first single is Live Fast Die Old. The prerelease single features remixes by Juan Maclean, Headman and Maral Salmassi. You can get the latter remix here [via tonspion]. Part two of the Live Fast Die Old remixes features Ed Banger Allstars as well as WhoMadeWho.

The new CSS (Cansei Der Ser Sexy) album is to be released soon and will be called Donkey. Weird, I know…
The band is losing some of its pop-sound on this album and going for a grungier sound, which is appropriate considering they are signed to Sub-Pop. As a teaser they have released the track Rat is Dead (Rage) which you can download here. You do have to go through a small signup process in order to download, however it requires only your country and email details, so its pretty painless…
Their first single will be Left Behind which you can pre-order here and is to be released on the 14th of July.

Finally, Sébastien Tellier released the sexy and beautiful album Sexuality earlier this year. For those of you who missed it, be sure to check it out! As an added bonus to those of you who liked it (and as a teaser for those of you who haven’t heard it) download the Donovan remix over at betterPropaganda.

keep it dirty!

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Better late than never, right? This is a case of massive procrastination! We recieved a review copy of Exit to Riverside soon after its release in 2006 and i’ve listened to and loved it since then, but didn’t get round to writing about it! Sorry Justin. RickDisco even imported the album from Germany ’cause it’s so awesome!
If you didn’t know that CBS is Justin from unit.r then i can only suggest a visit to the artist pages…

Most reviews focus on the hip-hop feel of the album, which comes from the glitchy-broken beats which show that Markus & Sibot aren’t the only cats in the Cape with some funk! Strings, guitar and synthesized sounds flow over the beats producing a sound that is both uplifting and relaxing. You can still buy copies of the album via import (what does that say about distribution in South Africa…) and i suggest you do cause it is a must have. <Like oh my god!>

Considerate Builders Scheme - Three Beats Short (369) This track opens the album. Nice busted-up beats!

Considerate Builders Scheme - Spare Change (346) You probably heard this in an ad and wondered what it was… now you know

Considerate Builders Scheme - Down Nine (335) I had to put this track up just cause it sums the album quite nicely. Go on, give it a listen…

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For those of you who missed the launches, shame on you! The rest of us had a blast, dancing and singing like spazzoids, so blegh. Unit.r put out an awesome live show as usual and the new songs came over just as well as old favourites.

The album is 45mins of synth sexiness. Opening the album is their first single Daft, which is a deceptively upbeat synth-pop ode to unhappy love reminiscent of Postal Service (only better). Favourites like So Long and It’s all about are also on there. The best song in my opinion isn’t listed on the album can be heard by fast forwarding the last track to around 6:25 (the album is nowhere close to at the time of writing -ed.) and is called The Rooftop according to Destrukto. Watching them perform it is also pretty awesome, since the vocoder vocals are courtesy of Justin and him jamming with his microphone/headphone combo headset is pretty cool. Am I the only one that wants more Vocoders in electronic music? Bring back the ‘coder…

So we wanted to post up a track or two from the album to give you guys a taste, but Unit.r’s management said NO downloads, only streaming and feature Daft. Which is odd, ’cause if you click here, you can download the mp3 from unit-r.com… So I won’t upload The Rooftop for your listening pleasure, but instead offer you Daft in streaming format. That means you’re gonna have to buy the album, but don’t worry, it’s fuckin’ great from start to finish and worth every cent. So do it, buy Phosphenes!

Stream Unit.r – Daft (if you don’t see the player above get the latest version of flash here, or try to not use Internet Explorer, try firefox instead)

Links:
unit-r.com
unit.r on myspace

Check the video to Clap after the jump

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