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.
