This week’s new-ish music round-up includes new releases from Droniac, Genevieve Artadi, Guy Buttery, Mr JazziQ, and Twiza.
Ed’s note: Fuck you Spoek Mathambo, we took this week off.
Limerence | Droniac | Bandcamp | HE
Earnest post-rock, delivered with fraught intensity, as the genre demands! Staccato stabs punctuate emo sulking about girls who gave you their number, nestled between brooding breakdowns and arpeggiated riffs. “She’s a cancer … and I’m a Sagittarius” had me smirking. You want a band that can laugh at itself, right before launching into cookie-monster growls and possessed screaming. On balance, well worth the listen for fans of Slint, Unwound, and the like. As my girlfriend told me the other day, there is something soothing about polished metal.
GVA!!!!! | Genevieve Artadi | Bandcamp | LMN
Frenetic. Crazy. All over the fucking place in terms of genre. Anime-inspired, acid-jazz-fuelled, genre-bending musical madness. And I fucking love it.
Artadi has always surrounded herself with musicians who are eclectic, ridiculously talented and highly technical. And nowhere is this more evident than in her work with Louis Cole and their absolutely mental band, KNOWER.
That’s the thing about Artadi’s music—it’s not necessarily for everyone, and I don’t think it needs to be. Her latest album is creativity in its rawest form. She’s clearly had an absolute ball playing around with her influences, and it’s evident in the sheer diversity from one track to the next. One minute you’re listening to something that sounds like it belongs in a completely unhinged anime opening sequence, and the next you’re being swept away by these beautifully intricate jazz arrangements.
And yet, through all the sonic chaos, her signature sound remains unmistakable. Those sultry, effortlessly cool vocals. The acid-jazz-inspired riffs. The intricate drum patterns. The unexpected piano chords. The technical brilliance that somehow never feels like she’s just showing off. It’s all there.
An absolutely bonkers display of creativity from one of the most talented, diverse and versatile musicians around. Don’t sleep on GVA!!!!!. Seriously.
Improvisations from a Rural Church: Volume I | Guy Buttery | Bandcamp | RY
After a while, all of Guy Buttery’s albums start to sound the same, which is fucking beautiful. Everyone should own their own personal Guy Buttery to follow them around and make soothing guitar sounds over the course of their day—it would surely make rural politics less divisive.
Not that all of Improvisations is aural yoga. There is one particular thwock sound about halfway through that snapped me straight out of my reverie. Much of the record brings to mind the title of the Bukowski book, Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until Your Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit.
Improvisations from a Rural Church is an exploration of acoustics, ambient noises, thunderstorms, reveries, found organs, and a general esprit, resulting in a filigree palimpsest.
Sadly, though, it lacks an abundance of bats.
Coolest in the City | Mr JazziQ | ONErpm/Apple Music | HE
Amapiano works best when its creators push the limits of the style, instead of wearing a pair of formalistic handcuffs. JazziQ lives that freedom, presenting fresh rhythmic patterns with every track. The guests also bring a meaningful extra dimension to the project, among them Thesiix, Don Deeya, A.W.O, and Young Mafia. With tracks burning up Vibes On Main, Stance Social, and events like the Danko JazziQue Homecoming, if this is the state of the musical art form carrying South Africa’s music credibility at home and overseas, the country is well represented.
Eat The Rich | Twiza | FiveSidedRecords/Bandcamp | RY
During a recent G8 summit, a series of protests featured the usual slogans: Eat The Rich, Beat The Rich, Tax The Rich. These are second-hand slogans. The actual rich attending the summit must view these protests as a badge of legitimacy—we allow these weak-ass people to ply their weak-ass, worn-out slogans so they can secure their NGO funding while we appear open to dissent.
Months later, scattered across Joburg, those posters—wheatpasted on so many walls—have baked in the sun and rain, fading into the concrete: ineffectual, borrowed, meaningless in the grand scheme of things, mere posturing.
Twiza’s Eat The Rich is the teen speed-punk equivalent of one of those useless fucking posters.
Contributors: HE – Hagen Engler | LMN – Lloyd Martinez Newkirk | RY – Roger Young
It Wasn’t Like That!
No level-headed debates are in progress… yet.