Author: Themba Kriger

sixghost rides a dark horse

With the release of his second EP Abyss, Joburg-based producer sixghost continues exploring the dark, brooding sound he established on his debut EP Oblivion. “It’s titled Abyss because it’s a continuation from Oblivion where it seems I’m going deeper into the mood of the whole sound that I’m going into, that I’m trying to establish,” says sixghost.

While he started his path in production in 2011 when a friend introduced him to the production software Fruity Loops, last year saw him adopting the sixghost moniker and focusing more on his music. “I started taking it very seriously in 2016. That’s when I also released my first EP.” notes sixghost.

His uncle played a large role in his early musical education. “I was mostly surrounded by the blues & soul music – The O’Jays, Lenny Williams – because of my late uncle. He used to listen to a whole lot of that,” sixghost remembers. His contemporary influences are the likes of Dre and Vidal & Illangelo, while The Weeknd has had largest impact on him as a producer. “The Weeknd is my biggest influence in the music that I make,” he says.

Moody with sombre vocals, he describes his sound as ‘dark horse’. “I have this saying that I don’t ride waves, I make them. So the horse is actually my wave and the darkness of it is the sound,” sixghost explains. With lyrics that deal with sadness and depression and a heaviness in his beats, this darkness is evident.

Working with a wide range of vocalists, sixghost isn’t afraid to approach someone with a totally different sound. “I’m like ‘let’s collab’ and then I bring a beat and they bring the lyrics and we just come together,” sixghost says. More recently he has become a member of the Woke Arts collective which has opened up many opportunities for collaborations. “A lot of artists that I have been working with now are from this organisation called Woke Arts. So that’s where I get most of the guys that are collaborating with me now.”

Abyss is a two part release with part one being the darker of the two. “With part two it will be just slightly lighter because of the change in sound. This is like settling into the mood of the darkness, the dark sound,” sixghost explains. As part of the release he is also working on a show. “There’s a set that I’ve been trying to put together. I will be performing it live pretty soon. It’s going to be quite an experience because there’s a lot I want to put into this performance.”

After part two of Abyss is released sixghost will be dropping another EP, although it is still to be named and the direction isn’t fully decided yet. One thing is certain though, sixghost will keep pushing the limits of dark horse. “It’s gonna be quite experimental. I’m not gonna conform to anything. It’s just gonna still be me. Still gonna be my signature sound.” he says emphatically.

19 June 2017
Carlo Mombelli: Composing emotional stories

Writing and playing music has been a lifelong pursuit for self-taught bassist and composer Carlo Mombelli whose interest in music was sparked after seeing the ballet Swan Lake at the age of 8. Despite his father wanting him to become a chef and join him in his restaurant he secretly took piano lessons at school, listening to classical music as well as rock bands such as Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and The Police. This lead him to discovering Weather Report and particularly Jaco Pastorius which drew him to the bass guitar. His circumstances forced him to become self-taught. “There weren’t many teachers around so I just took what I was learning on the piano and applied it to my instrument.” says Carlo.

As a composer he learnt through trial and error. “I’ve got tons of compositions and they’re all crap, but it’s from those compositions that I learnt how to compose music.” Nature has been a major influence on his compositions. “At school I used to go into the forest at break time and go sit and listen to the wind and the leaves and the birds. I started getting into the idea of looping long before loop stations were out because I would always hear birds and insects looping. So I tried to create that in my music back then already. And the natural reverbs that I heard in the forest I’d play with that and try to create that reverb on my instrument when I play.”

Photography by Christo Doherty

When composing music he doesn’t sit at his piano or with his bass guitar but rather is constantly inspired. “Compositions always come to me naturally. I’m thinking about something or something has happened or I’m thinking about various situations or feelings and then a composition comes to me. That’s how I compose music, and it’s always happening. My music comes from inspiration and it’s not a formula. I don’t try to look for a genre or anything like that.”

In studio he has played bass for some of the biggest names in South African music from Sibongile Khumalo to Kyle Shepherd and Miriam Makeba. He was also a producer on the SAMA winning album Oscillations by Shane Cooper. However he focuses on developing his own sound and way of playing. “I’m simplifying my music and it’s becoming more like hymns and I’m starting to tell stories with more emotion and not technique at all. I want to tell a story with few colours. I know what sound I want. I’m also booking musicians that I like…and I need them to debate the topic which is my composition but I need them to debate it with their voice. I want to hear what they have to say in the composition and I don’t try to change that.”

19 May 2017
CAPECLUB: A platform for producers on Cape Town’s fringes

Born out of the mind of DJ and producer Andriques Petersen, aka Omar Moto, and Jodie Williams, one half of Surreal Sessionz, CAPECLUB is a label aimed at exposing the overlooked side of Cape Town’s dance music and bringing about change in an area that historically has been very monochrome. “We made sure that the focus is on young producers and producers that come from the fringes of the Cape Town scene. Guys that never have been celebrated.” says Omar Moto. “And usually that would be producers that happen to be persons of colour. Because Cape Town’s CBD scene is, and has always been, very white.”

Inspired by the ideas of Jersey Club labels, the aim is to be more than just a platform to release music. “It’s not just a label, but a collective as well” explains Omar Moto. “A collective where the artists work independently but everyone comes back to the label and they are known to be from that label.” In Omar’s opinion there is no shortage of talented, young producers in Cape Town. Through his campaign ‘Finding the Hype’ on GoodHope FM Omar Moto is able to connect with a lot of young producers. “I get sent a lot of music on a daily basis. A lot of the time it’s instrumental music and I just stay in touch with guys.”

It is this vast untapped potential that Omar wants to expose. “I’ve decided to do a release a week just to establish a strong footprint. These are the artists, this is what they can do and this is how they sound. Each month we’re going to have a theme going with the releases. This month it’s the Yellow series which is more focused on the lush, housey sounds, next month it’s going to be the Blue series which is going to be a bit more hard.”

The first release is ‘Yellow Cab’ by Ethan Crowie, a dark and dreamy exploration of tech house. “I was inspired by Kyle Watson trying to get influence from him as a deep house guy” explains Ethan. The rest of the month will see releases by Surreal Sessions, Sage Hitomi and Slim Groove. Despite the varied artist roster the music that CAPECLUB will be releasing shares a common ground and Omar Moto hopes the releases set a foundation that allows local acts to play more music produced in Cape Town. “The idea is that this is something that you could play in a club. The idea is to establish Cape Town as a place where artists can play songs by producers from their own city.” With a city full of eager, young producers CAPECLUB has the potential to help shine a spotlight on those producers that might otherwise go by unnoticed.

Ethan Crowie

11 May 2017
How PatricKxxLee burnt his life down

Zambian born PatricKxxLee describes his music as a dark cloud and atmospheric. His lyrics touch on human topics such as hedonism, pain, love, anger, sadness and heartbreak. “I just like to make music about people’s inner voices. Your conscience. Guilty conscience. It plays a huge role in my music.”

As a child, Patrick was surrounded by music thanks to his father. “My dad used to play music all day long. He studied in London and he brought ‘Jungle’ back to Zambia.” It was through his older cousin, whose music collection included 50 Cent, Nelly, Lloyd Banks, Tony Yayo & Mace, that Patrick discovered rap. “It’s quite a funny story how that happened. It was back in Zambia one day when my parents had left him in charge to babysit me, but he had to ditch to go somewhere, so he locked me inside his room and all there was this small stereo and a pile of CDs. I turned it on and out came G-Unit. I had nothing else to do and several hours to kill, so I just sat there and memorised all the lyrics, from first to last track.”

With 50 Cent and G-Unit counting as early influences, Patrick was also inspired by Linkin Park and Mike Shinoda’s rap project Fort Minor. However, he listened to a variety of music. “I used to listen to a lot of weird shit, like fucking Enrique Iglesias even, so there was a whole bunch of different sounds I was exposed to.”

Although Patrick started rapping in Grade 4 (when he was 9), it wasn’t until Grade 6 that he started wondering where beats came from and who produced them. His questions were answered when he found out about Fruity Loops through another cousin. “I downloaded it on Limewire and then I started making music everyday after that. I just fell in love with making my own beats from the moment I opened the program. It was my daily escape from lots of shit that was going on around me.”

PatricKxxLee’s upcoming debut album ‘Diary of an Arsonist’ tells the story of how some of the independent (and hedonistic) decisions he’s taken over the past few years have gotten him into trouble, with close friends, parents, girls and lost loves. “The album is about how I set my own life on fire all around me. A fire is uncontrollable, uncontainable, it just burns everything in its path but it also clears the ground for new things to grow. I feel like that’s the route my life took when I decided to rebel against the path my parents set out for me, leave college and focus on music instead. That was the day I set my life on fire, it was a trigger of sorts, and everything that followed is somehow connected, whether directly or indirectly. All the bad decisions, and all the right ones, and everything in between that turned into a mess for one reason or another is what I wanted to bring to life in ‘Diary of an Arsonist’. I believe everyone goes through the process of breaking out of the mold at a certain time in their lives, but my own experience was pretty fucking lit.”

Looking to release ‘Diary of an Arsonist’ at the end of June, PatricKxxLee will be taking the album on tour and is eager to have his sound heard. “I obviously want to tour South Africa, but I’m also going to go to Europe again this year and hopefully to America too. I love being on stage and live through all the emotions that went into making each song all over again.” With honest lyrics and a polished sound it’s only a matter of time before more ears listen.

4 May 2017
Spoek Mathambo – Mzansi Beat Code

Spoek Mathambo’s fifth solo album, ‘Mzansi Beat Code’, is both a culmination of years spent trying to find his own voice and sound, as well as a celebration of collaboration. Of the thirteen tracks on the album only two feature Spoek on his own. “Music right now is a bit more individualistic in an egotistical sense. I think some of the best music that I’ve enjoyed from the last hundred years is always based on a group. Be it how amazing hip hop releases are, they’re always collaborations. To the great rock, jazz, punk, funk it’s all based on really great groups. So for me it’s natural.” By collaborating with others he is able to tap into human skills that he or a machine does not posses, “I can reach them the best not through MIDI but through a human being who’s got their own rich concept based on a lifetime of playing that instrument”.

Rather than curating the sounds of South Africa, Spoek takes elements from the diverse sound spectrum and reinterprets them through his own lens, hence the name ‘Mzansi Beat Code’. “They’re ideas, concepts, codes, ways of doing things, but for the most part I’m deconstructing it and reconstructing it in a different way.”

While the album is Spoek’s solo production he does not view his role as that of a conductor leading an orchestra. “It’s lowkey just friendships and chill sessions for the most part. Demos that we share and just playing around and experimenting with some friends and some strangers that have become friends.” Still the album has Spoek’s energy. “I guess because I’m there from the beginning up until the end it leans towards what I want out of it.”

When asked if he sees himself as a rapper or producer first his answer is unequivocal. “I really hate rapping right now. I see myself as a beatmaker at the beginning of their career. I see myself as a producer.” From his Future Sound of Mzansi Mixes to the documentary of the same title and Fantasma’s ‘Free Love’ there is a clear path that leads to the release of ‘Mzansi Beat Code’. “It has taken me a long time to get to this point. It has taken me a really long time to get this ability of putting things together. I’ve been doing things since 2006, even before that with different stuff, trying to articulate certain ideas and just not having the required skill set . So this is the first project, well I’d say Fantasma ‘Free Love’ is the first project where things came together”.

By deconstructing and rebuilding the ‘Beat Codes’ of South Africa, Spoek is creating a sound and aesthetic that is familiarly South African but excitingly innovative.

25 April 2017
Wet Dreams Recordings presents Work Not Hype

With the launch of their first official compilation Work Not Hype, South African underground electronic label Wet Dreams Recordings is coming out of the bedroom and announcing itself as a real label. Featuring artists such as Rose Bonica, Jumping Back Slash, Dion Monti, Lorenzo, DJ 909 Clap, Yezzah and vGrrr. Altered Natives will be the final artist to feature. Label founder and producer Big Space is proud of the release. “This is the first one that’s actually going to be mastered. I paid lots of time carefully selecting the tunes. It’s very well curated.”

Wet Dreams Recordings started off as a high school fantasy for Johannesburg based Big Space. “I guess I always wanted a place where myself and my friends or like-minded people could release stuff because it was different and there was never anything like that in South Africa except for say African Dope.”

While the music on Wet Dreams Recordings spans a variety of electronic genres, the common thread running throughout is that they all take a different form of expression. “Aesthetic wise in South Africa it’s very hard to find people that think about music outside of cash or just pushing the levels of ideas. So I just look for that.”

Wet Dreams Recordings’ first release, Night Sweats Vol. 1, featured a handful of artists that shared this mindset. “Apart from Jumping Back Slash, who’s a friend, the other guys are just guys that I met on the internet. Either I contacted them or they came up to me and just said they like my stuff and vice versa.”

Work Not Hype will be available online as well as on CD. “We’re going to do a limited run of some CDs with some very nice art to accompany it so you don’t just feel like you’re buying a piece of plastic that you’ll never use. It’s gonna have a nice story, just talking shit about everyone, because people like that. There’s something for everyone I guess. If you don’t like music there’s some great gossip. Me shitting on people. Pictures of dicks. Pictures of dicks shitting on people. You know, art.”

When it comes to how his approach towards the label has changed Big Space is frank. “Shit, it’s a bit fucking scary because now I have other people’s careers in my hand not just mine. It’s just basically following strategy, something I never did before. I guess playing the game of the game, but on my own terms. The way I plan to infiltrate the game is literally by just putting out consistently good quality stuff, because it’s not just gqom and Goldfish and Freshlyground. There’s tons of other stuff that’s coming from here.”

With their aim to be a platform for different yet high quality music, Wet Dreams Recordings is carving out a niche locally at a time when the focus on South African music is greater than ever and the need for such a platform even more so. “I’m tired of trying to impress South Africa because they don’t even care about anything different unless it’s a copy of international stuff. So I want it to be heard by the right people that want to hear different music.”

13 April 2017