This week’s round-up of newish releases from Langa Mavuso, Linda Sikhakhane, Fontaines D.C., Warren Justin, Schwabie, and CVBA.
Therapy: The Other Side (Deluxe) | Langa Mavuso | Sound African Recordings/Sony | RY
Langa Mavuso’s voice will turn sharing leftover pizza into a candlelit dinner. Therapy is so unremarkably good at being what it is, its strength is in the fact that it quietly gets on with the job of being background music to fantasy. It has an early D’Angelo energy, erotic R&B that will convince you that music-video sex is possible in a shared apartment.
Therapy: The Other Side is utterly earnest, full of yearning, heartfelt desire and emotion. But it is not only this; its more affecting tracks travel through guest vocals evoking gospel and spiritual harmonising.
Beautifully produced with breathy vocals, a delicate/tapping snare, background singers harmonising lines like “your love is so dangerous / so dangerous / treacherous / treacherous” — Thong Song via The Commodores.
I would absolutely 100% put this album on if I wanted to seduce somebody without having to talk about the music at all. Such is the vibe. I believe Mavuso can fly, I believe he can touch the sky.
LINDA | Linda Sikhakhane | Blue Note | HE
Oh, Linda Sikhakhane, you begin our days to sing. When we feel our history and our futures collide, our talent and our aspirations, our dreams and our memories; then it all makes sense. This Zulu jazz child, birthed with producer Nduduzo Makhathini, fuses the formalism of the style with the freedom of the attitude. A seamless welding of skill and vision. The vocals work best where they function as tone-poem tributes to the way of the artist, without presenting any punchline, any solution. Let all be journey; destinations tend to disappoint. Let us wander, mapless, in the streets of our imaginations; blissfully lost.
Acid Garden | CVBA | Apple Music | LMN
Minimal tech. CVBA’s Acid Garden, a three-track EP, sounds like one long, monotonous track, and I’m only on track two as I write this. I’m rundown, coming down, and despite this being a far cry from what I usually listen to these days, I can confirm that these melodic, bass-heavy tracks by CVBA are actually making me feel pretty relaxed.
The problem is, I’ve had three hours’ sleep, and relaxed is the opposite of what I need today. As much as I used to love minimal tech, this is the kind of min tech that makes me feel as if I’ve smoked buttons or snarfed perd-powder, aka ketamine.
I can’t fault the production, though. It’s polished, well-produced and expertly mastered. On occasion during this six-to-seven-minute-per-track EP, I do find myself wishing I was on an AfrikaBurn dancefloor, half falling asleep but also swaying side to side as the sun rises over the Karoo, while beautiful betties and brasse smile at me as their morning MDMA kicks in.
Dopamine Chamber | Fontaines D.C. | XL Recordings/Bandcamp | HE
I loaded up the new Fontaines before leaving on a run from my flat in Morningside, Johannesburg. It says something for the disappointing mediocrity of this album that I had reached Wendywood before a halfway decent song came up. Ponderous, basic grooves; vague, minimalist lyrics, and a bleak change of tone. From fierce, ragged skills on explosive, melodic blasts, to this drawn-out soporific? I wanted this to be the transition to global acclaim. But even if it somehow is, given the vagaries of modern marketing, this stage of the journey will evoke, for me, dismay. The grumpy frustration of a disappointed fan, sweating bullets on Bowling Road, reduced to walking, and scheming, “What the fuck, okes?” If Fontaines were The Cure, is this their Pornography? Or more like their 4:13 Dream? I guess it’s time for a change by album five. And there have been very few missteps, but for me this is one.
Vreedsaam | Schwabie | Dkoda/Apple Music | LMN
Upon starting the Spotify stream of Schwabie’s latest EP, I am pleasantly surprised. Yes, this is Afrikaans music. It’s folk. It’s Afrikaans folk. FOLK. If you know me at all, you’ll know I struggle with most folk music, especially the local cuisine, but to be honest, I don’t hate the first track, “Vrede”. It truly encapsulates the feel of vrede, or peace, for our Soutie friends out here.
Into the second track, the walls of my resolve for listening to this “music” begin to crumble. I can’t fault his lyrics; they’re well-written, albeit simple, but I can’t shake the mantra in my brain: “This is like Afrikaans Matthew Mole.”
“Sit dit sagter, sit dit sagter, vernaand, vernaand, oh-oh-ohhhhh” — classic SA radio-friendly singalong drivel. That being said, I can see the appeal. Perhaps you’re a boet from Melkbos: Afrikaans, a surfer, who enjoys this kinda music following a stressful surf with kooks?
Maybe your name is Adri, and you enjoy shopping at Typo, French manicures and drinking wine at Durbanville Hills met die ander MEISIES (sonder die kinders!). En oppad huis toe huil jy na jy Schwabie se derde track, “Alles”, wat jy in jou Jimny 5-door sports 4×4 speel.
Ek weet nie. Maar hierdie is nie my koppie tee nie. That being said, this Afrikaner’s voice is stunning, his lyrics seem okay, but it’s yet again another entry in the “copy-paste-SA-folk-music-kak” category.
Threads of Eternity | Warren Justin | Apple Music | RY
Firstly, what is up with the fucking album cover? A red velvet envelope, with W.J. in gold-leaf lettering, held by two gloved hands, belonging, it appears, to the same person. The hands are holding the envelope in a way that suggests they’re passing it to themselves.
Sort of soul melodies, brush drumming, seductive harmonising, airy and in the background, and the lyrics are all along the lines of “I won’t give up on me and you” — the ghost of Rebirth of Cool Vol. 7. The keys, bass, guitar and saxophone loops transmit jazzy as a concept. Familiar melodies seem to be one note off to avoid copyright infringement.
By track three, any notion that there might be some progression is gone. Every track has the same beat, the same muted instrumentalisation, airy and reverbed singing from the depths of the soul, chugging along to relentless brush drumming. Tracks are long because they don’t go anywhere, don’t know how to end.
It is no small feat to have produced an entire album that sounds like the DJ at the end of a matric dance trying to get everyone to leave. There’s one couple left slow dancing, neither wanting the other to make any move at all, so they’re locked in step in fear that the lights might come up, occasionally passing a covered prop from a dinner-theatre version of All That Jazz.
Contributors: HE – Hagen Engler | LMN – Lloyd Martinez Newkirk | RY – Roger Young