Tag: dj lag

Gqom Oh! strikes again with The Originators EP

It’s been two years since the Gqom Oh! label released the compilation The Sound of Durban, a superb survey of the ferocious electronic music pumping out of KZN. Created by young bedroom producers in the townships and suburbs which ring the coastal city, and played on raucous dance floors and powerful taxi sound systems, gqom centres ominous drums and menacing loops. The aesthetic intensity responds to harsh social conditions, with journalist Kwanele Sosibo calling it “the CNN of The RDP townships”. But outside of its Durban strongholds, gqom was viewed with scepticism or even hostility, derided as the unruly proletarian step-child of upwardly mobile house and kwaito. Abroad however, it was recognised as an important new strain of dance music, with Rome-based Nan Kolè establishing Gqom Oh! as an international platform for Durban artists.

Locally, the musical landscape has shifted dramatically since 2016. Gqom inspired music is all over the mainstream, with self-styled ‘Gqom Queen’ Babes Wodumo even appearing on Kendrick Lamar’s massive Black Panther soundtrack. Such a cultural moment makes it important to recognise the potentially overlooked creators and places who originated the style. This latest five track vinyl (with four extras included on the digital release) surveys the past, present and future of gqom. The opulent cover art announces the project’s intent. The featured artist are placed among palm trees, taxis, Diwali fireworks and the Moses Mabhida stadium, highlighting the geography gqom has blossomed in, with roaring flames and a lion to representing its musical power.

Side A begins with DJ Lag’s ‘Daisies’. Despite his young age, Lag is one of the most prominent producers working, with his stunning music video for ‘Ice Drop’ being possibly the best visual document of the gqom scene to date. He is joined by the legendary Griffit Vigo, who escalates ‘Ree’s Vibe’ from a few simple beats to a sprawling sonic adventure.

The second side explores different shades of Gqom. Naked Boys hypnotic ‘Story Teller’, with its earworm hook of “what’s the story” represents sgubhu, the hybrid gqom-house style which is all over the radio. Rude Boyz end the vinyl on a stirring note with the imaginative ‘Umshudo’. But the real stand out is Sbucardo da DJ‘s ‘Iphoyisa’, with guest vocalist Abnormal laconically reciting the Zulu lyrics “We at the club, Mr. Policeman don’t disturb us”. Built on top of a sinister synthesiser loop, it reflects the key influence of rap on the evolution of gqom.

With worthwhile bonus tracks by the same artists on the digital release, The Originators is another excellent work by Gqom Oh!, showing both the roads the genre has taken and what future horizons it may looking toward.

As an exclusive, Bubblegum Club readers can stream the compilation for a limited time below, with both formats available for purchase at Bandcamp. Keep the gqom fire burning!

23 February 2018
South Africa, What’s Up? Residency at ANTiGEL Festival

Over the last 8 years ANTiGEL Festival has grown to become one of the largest cultural events in Geneva. By bringing artistic experience to parts of the city that are detached from this kind of engagement, the festival aims to be a reminder of the importance of making spaces for arts and culture. Africa What’s Up is a residency that falls within the festival. Artists from South Africa and Egypt have been invited to put together an evening dedicated to cultural music and cultural production on their countries.

Photography by Chris Saunders

Throughout the week-long residency, South African and Egyptian artist have been interacting with cultural producers from Mali, Nigeria and Switzerland. It has also provided a moment of pause and refection. In addition to the time spent networking and teasing out performance plans, artists have been able to engage with one another and the residency organisers in daily roundtable discussions. This expands the purpose of the residency to that of a space for conversations that directly affect artists. These include conversations around womxn’s access to performance time and how this is connected to networks, resources and development. Discussions also included the larger question of access for artists in general with regards to visa applications and funding to sustain their practices.

Photography by Viviane Sassen

Even though the residency has a focus on music, it also embraces the importance of cross-disciplinary pollination. This can be seen by the performance element.

South Africa’s CUSS Group and the Swiss cultural organisation Shap Shap co-curated the South Africa What’s Up lineup, which includes performances by FAKA, DJ Prie Nkosazana, Dirty Paraffin and DJ Lag. Choreographer Manthe Ribane and Swiss electro-soul duo Kami Awori will be presenting their collaborative effort. Having met in Johannesburg, they have combined music, choreography and a visual display to present a full sensory experience.

Photography by Kent Andreasen

What is particularly important about the residency is how it encourages cross-disciplinary pollination and has opened up discussion around what it necessary to facilitate easier access to gigs and spaces for African artists. It has also provided a space to draw out how these kinds of conversations need to be translated into pragmatic steps for action.

Photography by Chris Saunders

9 February 2018
Distruction Boyz are the Future of Gqom

Emerging out of the townships of Durban, the reach of gqom has spread over the last five years touching the rest of South Africa and making an impression on the global underground. With pioneers such as DJ Lag and the Rude Boyz having laid the foundation for the next generation of artists, now more than ever there is an appetite for the stripped down, minimal sounds of Durban.

Having produced Babes Wodumo’s breakout hit “Wololo”, Kwa-Mashu based producers Distruction Boyz’ 13 track debut album “Gqom is the Future” showcases the duo’s intention of leaving a lasting impression on the music industry with one of the most exciting sounds to emerge out of South Africa in the last decade. Dubbed sghubu, a subgenre of gqom, Distruction Boyz’ sound is softer, more melodic, with more commercial leanings than it’s underground cousin.

The album features collaborations with rising stars and heavyweights of the scene including Prince Bulo, Benny Maverick, Dlala Mshunqisi, Rude Boyz, Tipcee, Cruel Boyz and even DJ Tira. Favourite tracks from the last year including “2 O’Clock”, “Madness”, “Midnight” and 2016’s nationwide hit “Shut Up and Groove” all make an appearance. With relentless grooves and syncopated rhythms, the 13 tracks on “Gqom is the Future” hit you like a freight train and make sitting still an impossibility.

With “Gqom is the Future” Thobani “Que” Mgobhozi and Zipho “Gold” Mthembu have assembled an album that captures the vibrant energy of Durban and it’s no surprise that the album has been released in time for summer. With promising initial sales, the Distruction Boyz’ goal of reaching Gold seems within reach. Expanding the palette of what one expects from Gqom, the Distruction Boyz have added new elements to what is an already exciting and evolving genre. The only questions that remains is where the future of Gqom is going to take it next.

6 November 2017
DJ Lag to release exclusive ‘Trip to New York’ EP to fans for free

Gqom innovator, DJ Lag is about to strike again with his first, self-titled EP having only come out last year. DJ Lag is a pioneer who propelled the Durban Gqom sound straight into the capitals of the international electronic music industry.

DJ Lag has performed across the country, including at the Cape Town Electronic Music Festival, and has shared the stage with respected artists such as Skrillex and Euphonik at the Bridges For Music workshop in Kliptown, Soweto. He debuted in the international scene at the Unsound Festival in Poland and has since performed in a number of other cities.

The King of Gqom, together with his management company Black Major, is dropping an exclusive EP to fans via WhatsApp for free on the 14th of July.

DJ Lag’s Trip to New York EP is a 3 track EP with a remix of Khonkolo from Okzharp. The only way fans can get the EP, is by heading over to djlag.com and making sure they are on the send out list by 11am on the 14th. The EP will sent out to all those who have signed up in time.

Fans who sign up for the EP will be the first to get exclusive links to future tracks.

13 July 2017
Georg Gatsas – Exploring Cities Through Portraiture

The work of Swiss photographer Georg Gatsas has been published by magazines such as Wire, Dazed, i-D and Beat. Georg has been operating between London and Zurich for the past couple of years. He recently spent some time in Johannesburg as part of an artist residency organized by Pro Helvetia. I caught up with him to find out about his work and his time in SA.

Georg shot his first series called “The Process” (2002-2007) in New York which ended up in several exhibitions, magazines and publications. Currently, he mainly works as an analogue photographer. Shooting on film has allowed him to develop a particular attitude towards the shots he takes. Thinking about the cost of film rolls and that each closing of the shutter has a feeling of finality to it, Georg tries to focus and capture the right moment, taking less shots than he would with a digital camera. And often he finds it easier to carry around an analogue camera. In mentioning his creative process, Georg emphasized how he enjoys working organically and tries not to force any part of his work.

Tube Station

Georg’s first series were mainly portraits of musicians, visual artists, performance artists and designers which he shot at night. The people he was shooting were living mostly parallel to mainstream society; they had created their own hub. Through taking their portraits he got into their sleeping rhythms and started shooting nighttime streetscapes and the environment of the people in his portraits. The combination of these pictures became a portrayal of New York City and particular kinds of people who lived there. While residing in London for an exhibition in 2008, he started shooting the UK base music scene, which over an eight-year period has developed into a series called “Signal The Future”.”The portraits as part of the series become a portrayal of a certain environment, but also of the times we live in.” Georg explained that his work can be looked at in different ways, bringing to the fore questions on global sound, migration politics, cultural production in a hyper-capitalist city such as London, new aesthetics, new instruments of the underground, and how the mainstream reacts to it.

Having only spent time in Europe and the States before, he was initially quite thrown by the different rhythms and ways of being in Johannesburg. But soon his desire to learn about the flow of the city became stronger. His photographs from SA will follow a similar creative starting point to his previous work – capturing artists best representing their city. He has been photographing some of South Africa’s most interesting producers, musicians, artists and performers of 2016, including Fela Gucci, Mante Ribane and Dear Ribane, DJ Lag, DJ Doowap and Moonchild Sanelly. In his comment on how he selected people to photograph he explained that “it has to be a fan boy thing. So I am first of all a fan [of their work].” He explained that his choices were based on people doing important work, but work that was not quite defined yet. “I don’t like defined stuff. I like surprises…I like when people try out new things, things that move forward.”The photographs from Georg’s Johannesburg series will also be linked and combined with the images from his previous series as some of the artists in all these series know each other personally, are communicating and collaborating with each other.

Manthe Ribane

Georg’s experiences in Johannesburg and the people he has met have influenced the way in which he thinks about his work. “I have learned a lot politically, work wise, rhythmically. And a lot on the history of photography coming out of Africa and South Africa which is heavy, complex and difficult.”

Georg will be back in April for the second part of his residency. His first solo museum exhibition will take place at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen in Switzerland in November 2017, and parts of it will hopefully lead into partnership exhibitions in London and Johannesburg.

DancerII

Sky H1

Bill Kouligas

2 January 2017
2016 – The Year in Dread

The dominant theme in the innumerable ‘best of 2016’ lists is disappointment, failure and despair. A year categorised by the rise of the Far Right, war, random acts of violence, hate speech, death and the ominous cracking of the polar ice caps. In the parts of the world that weren’t already in social crisis, this was the year in which the chickens of the 07/08 financial meltdown finally came home to roost. In South Africa, the year was characterised by sleaze as the rich and powerful continue to plunder the state, militarized campuses and a general sense of social stagnation.

In such bleak times, music is even more important in expressing anxiety, resistance and hope. Of course, culture is no substitute for political struggle. (Just look at how the Clinton campaign held the delusory idea that a few celebrity endorsements would win against Trump.) But art can help us find our bearings, even if just to say how fucked up things are. So here is my highly subjective list of the releases which best captured the tone of the dystopian present.

DJ Lag– DJ Lag EP. A few months ago, a video was leaked from the US Defence Department which predicts a future of high-tech militaries fighting low tech insurgents in the favelas, shacks and townships of the global South. This futuristic EP from KZN is the sound of the South fighting back, an off-the-shelf laser pointer taking down an imperial drone. Lag is an architect with his beats, using snatches of missing sound to ramp up the intensity. Furthermore, this release highlights how Gqom, and its numerous offshoots, is the most significant music currently coming out of this country.

David Bowie- Blackstar. Bowie did about as much as person can in one lifetime. And rather than facing his trip to death’s undiscovered country with fear or mewling resignation, he brilliantly stage-managed his exit. The black star of the title stood in for the cosmic terror of space, the personal terror of cancer, even the brutality of ISIS. But most importantly, it was a final artistic triumph.

Danny Brown– Atrocity Exhibition. Many critics this year seemed overly enamoured of the saccharine positivity of Chance the Rapper’s gospel sound. Instead of singing with Jesus, Danny Brown was laughing with the Devil. Completing the trilogy which he began with XXX and Old, Brown released his masterpiece. And for a schizophrenic, post punk inspired trip through personal dysfunction it’s also surprisingly fun, with Brown offering all kinds of wayward life advice. My single favourite musical moment of 2016 is when the beat drops on ‘When It Rain’, a tribute to his hometown of Detroit which oscillates between despair and nihilistic pride ‘’ whole damn city probably got a couple warrants.’’

Radiohead- A Moon Shaped Pool. After the pleasant, but underwhelming King of Limbs, Radiohead decided to go back to doing what they do best- grand statements about the terrors of late capitalism. This beautifully orchestrated album is rooted in personal heartbreak but also glances at global warming and populist hatemongering.

FAKA – Bottoms Revenge. This year was full of terrible things done in the name of religion. In stark contrast, FAKA offer an alternative spirituality of metamorphosis and transcendence. The entire EP is orchestrated like a ritual. Occasionally disturbing, sometimes confusing, always revelatory.

28 December 2016
Muse Festival: Crossing the Great Divides of Cape Town’s Fractured Underground

Cape Town has hope on the horizon. A city well known for its social segregation and physically apparent apartheid-born economic divides has a new underground-ish musical savior being birthed. A brand new festival, put on by Nomadiq Music, Black Major, We House Sundays and Wax On aims to create a space of exchange for the like-minded musically-inclined populace of the city and beyond.

At this point, most of us are aware of the levels of race-based subcultural segregation in The Colony (Cape Town). We’ve seen the diagrams of the persistently insular race distribution across the peninsula. We’ve read the stories of POCs putting on ‘white’ voices and using ‘white’ names to gain access to anything from basic housing to restaurants and hotels. We’ve been to events where the ethos is good, but the crowds are lilly-white and kept that way by door policy and choice of marketing channels and locations.

Added to that, we should also all, by now, be aware of the exclusion of queer, otherwise-abled and womxn’s bodies from so many positions of power, influence and entertainment in Cape Town’s social spaces.

Many promoters who are not hetero, men or white have struggled to make in-roads into the moneyed social spaces in CT, which exist almost exclusively in the city bowl and along the Atlantic Seaboard (with some exceptions). The spaces situated outside of those areas either struggle to gain momentum or suffer the fate of many popular opinions of both audiences and corporate sponsors. We think that anything outside of the City Bowl is too far away (*rolls eyes*) or that things ‘there’ will be under-attended and therefore not worth going to, OR, most sinister of them all, that they will be ‘hectic’ (read: brown).

Added to that, there are disparate communities of music-lovers – with the same outlook on music and its enjoyment – that exist separately due to inherited subcultural boundaries and who gravitate towards spaces with some comfortable cultural ‘baggage’. The baggage manifests as ‘Cape Flats events are dangerous/just deep house and kwaito’, ‘city bowl events are whites-only’ (kinda true), ‘Obs is for ska, drug-dealing and hippies’.
Spaces like the now-defunct Cold Turkey, Ikasi Experience, now-closed Bang Bar (with a new spot opening up to replace it in Ottery), LIT collective events in the CBD, The Work Hub in Woodstock, and so many more are easy examples of how those sentiments are just not accurate.

If you can’t see past the ingrained social and physical segregations, a solution beyond engaging in existing transformative spaces, is to build something outside of it all. Enter Colorbox Studios, their regular events like the Nomadiq Music Block Party, We House Sundays and the vast spectrum of events at the venue that seek to escape the connotations of most of Cape Town’s nightlife and musiclife.

Situated in a predominantly industrial area in Paarden Eiland – literally seven minutes from the city bowl, and pretty easily accessible from the suburbs to the South, North and East of the city centre – Colorbox manages to build on an ethos of warmth, openness and intentional integration of those same-mindset-but-insulated subcultures that exist across the peninsula. By building landmark events like the Nomadiq Block Party and We House Sundays, for example, that actively bring together a culturally diverse set of promoters to access a collective audience, they both flourish in terms of numbers and importantly also achieve a human-centred safe space of exchange that allows people to connect in ways they wouldn’t have otherwise been able to. And not in a saccharine ‘rainbow nation’ kind of way.

As a culmination of these efforts to break down sub-culturally insular experiences, they have embarked on an ambitious expansion on this philosophy, by working together with Black Major Selects – the programming arm of the hugely successful management agency – and Wax On – Paul Waxon’s ever-popular vinyl-only monthly club night at Waiting Room. Along with the Dope Goods Market, these 4 promoters have divvied up this coming weekend’s days and nights to program their inaugural ‘All Weekend Music Festival’, called Muse.

Headlined by Joburg’s Kenzhero, Durban’s DJ Lag (as part of his nationwide EP release tour), CT’s very own Card On Spokes and NYC’s iconic house royalty, Monique Bingham, the weekend promises to be a ‘space of musical exchange’ and an opportunity to flourish, enjoy what/who they know and discover so much that they don’t.

All info is available on the Facebook event page and tickets are available here

Listen to the Muse mixtape below:

8 December 2016
DJ Lag Steps Up

When asked to describe the sound of the Gqom subgenre, DJ Lag doesn’t hesitate- ‘it’s raw and hype.’ Since the beginning of this decade, it has become the defining electronic music to come from Durban and it’s surrounding townships, like Lag’s home Clermont. Gqom takes SA production to a new extreme of brooding intensity. It’s powerful enough to command attention when blaring 130 bpm at dangerous volumes on public transport. But it has enough nuance to reward intimate listening on cellphone headphones. Coming from an isiZulua word for drum, Gqom really does sound like a huge monolith being hurled onto a heaving dancefloor. Despite its popularity, it still remains an underground status with little overt media or radio support in South Africa.

But such potency has also given it an international cachet. DJ Lag himself has recently been featured on UK music websites eagerly awaiting the release of his self-titled debut EP. Coming out on the London label Goon Club All Stars, it will be backed up with a tour of Asia and Europe. Ahead of the new release, he has dropped the spine tingling ‘16th Step ‘as a teaser. Like so much Gqom it makes you want to dance, while having an unmistakable menace. The beat sounds like something horrific scratching at your door on a stormy night. Underneath runs a synthesiser reminiscent of a murderous robot haunting you through the flooded streets of future Durban, after the city has been lost to rising sea levels. It builds and builds and then suddenly drops out completely. In a masterful stroke, Lag leaves in a block of absent sound. Just as you think it’s over, it suddenly drives in again, going off into an unexpected but welcome conclusion. The step on this song is that feeling when you are about to fall asleep, but are awaken with a jolt as you imagine losing your footing. A sure-fire way to feel awake.

And he has been honing this craft since a young age. His first introduction to recording was at age 12 when he went with his rapper cousin to a recording studio. Seeing a producer at work making beats immediately hooked him in. It was a few years before he could get his own PC, but as soon as he did he started exploring the possibilities offered by Fruity Loops. His own musical progression is like a Darwinian microcosm of the evolution of Gqom itself. Beginning with hip hop he, then slid into kwaito. He then took a detour into a percussive house style. But hearing Gqom pioneers Naked Boyz for the first time locked him onto the deep new style that was breaking out in KZN around the turn of the decade. Since then, he has built up an impressive back catalogue of production, which keep the drive of Gqom while adding in deeper shades of nuance and sophistication.

His EP comes at an interesting time for the style, as it is also sprouting new offshoots, such as the more pop orientated Gqom trap and it’s house cousin, Sghhubu. In the early days of its coalescing into a distinct style, Gqom was characterized by a certain mystery. Young producers would put up songs fresh from being factory tested at intense backyard parties onto file sharing sites, without clear attribution or titles. This created issues of plagiarism, with rivals claiming credit for others tracks. As a result, artists at the styles forefront like Lag and Rudeboyz are taking control of their public image. It’s also a way to grow the genre by highlighting discographies, which the audience can watch evolve. With his cinematic, emotional style DJ Lag is poised to become an internationally appreciated South African pioneer.

21 October 2016
Meet Distruction Boyz: The savvy young producers taking Gqom to a new audience

By 2012 the gqom style of electronic music had already made a huge impact on youth audiences in Durban’s townships. The new sound rumbled across dimly lit dance floors, reverberated within customised taxis and murmured through beat-up handsets. Inspired by the hysteria/excitement surrounding the new sound, three childhood friends, Manique Soul, Que and Goldmax (real names Lindelwa Mbhele, Thobane Mgobozi, and Zipho Mthembu) began DJing and producing gqom music together. At the time they were all still Grade 10 high school students.

Like the many other producers in their area, Manique Soul, Que and Goldmax are all self-taught, having learnt their craft purely through trial and error. It was via this process of experiential learning that the group developed both their mission and their identity. ‘Pazamisa’ is a Zulu word meaning to disrupt and from this the Disturction Boyz name was coined.

Although gqom is what inspired Distruction Boyz to start making music it is sgubhu, a ‘melodic’ sub genre of gqom that has gained them recognition in the music industry. Their track 2OCLOCK is a good example of how dark strings, broken kick-drums and repetitive vocal samples, all traditionally gqom characteristics, can be fused with melodic house synths to create sgubhu. Apart from being more melodic than gqom, sgubhu is a more commercially viable sound. The perception amongst dj’s and producers on the scene is that gqom is inaccessible for a mass audience and that its place is in the underground. It’s a fair assessment considering that gqom has mostly been ignored by record labels and radio stations in South Africa, despite the genres widespread popularity in KwaZulu Natal.

Since starting to produce sgubhu, Distruction Boyz have seen their audience grow and their star rise. They have worked with industry heavyweights like Dj Tira, Mampintsha and Dj Sox and are now closely affiliated with the record label Afrotainment. Both Que and Goldmax believe that they wouldn’t have met Tira if they were only making gqom. Although their focus is now on sgubhu, Distruction Boyz are still producing gqom but are no longer releasing it with commercial intentions. Que sees it as a exclusive sound, something ‘just for us and our friends when they come over to visit”.

The young producers now emerging out of gqom’s first wave are more industry savvy than their predecessors. One of the reasons Manique Soul, Que and Goldmax joined forces is because they believed that being a part of a group would fast track both their artistic progression and their trajectory in the industry. New ideas and approaches are key to ensuring that Durban’s new sounds reach a wider audience. Distruction Boyz, along with peers like Dark Dawgs and Da Golddust, are candid about their intentions. Not only do they want to make gqom accessible but they also see their music as a business. A successful career in the music industry is that much more attainable thanks to the foundation laid down by gqom pioneers like Rudeboyz, Dj Lusiman, Dj Target No Ndile, Griffit, Sbucardo and Dj Lag.

Despite Gqom not getting the recognition it deserves, the genre’s contribution and influence on Durban’s and South Africa’s music scene is undeniable. It is a fertile sound which is inspiring new artists and spawning popular sub genres like Sgubhu, Gqom Trap and Core Tribe.

7 April 2016