Bubblegum Club

Tag: ep

  • Premiere: Swishy Delta drops ‘Bronwynne’, exlcusively with Bubblegum Club

    Today we drop an exclusive to settle you into the crisp, cold months ahead. Coming out of one of the coolest label in Cape Town, Swishy Delta has all the right co-signs from Damascus to Yes in French… but let the music speak for itself.

    The 21st century is the age of multi-hyphenates and slashies, creatives have unbounded themselves from genres, titles and mediums to infiltrate the attention spans of the online audience. Swishy Delta aka Daniel Mark Nel, painter/beatmaker has hitherto expressed himself through atmospheric paintings and graphics and is now releasing his first solo musical effort, Bronwynne;  a 4 track EP released via Quit Safari. The sounds are fresh and emotive, with smatterings of urban sounds and new-age-y murmurs.

    Quit Safari is headed up by Bas Van Oudenhove and Sebastian Zenasi. The Cape Town based label is releasing some interesting sounds, and this first effort from Swishy Delta is a welcome reminder of all the edge and emotion that can come out of the Mother City, the meeting of the natural order with urban elements spills out of the sounds and offers something to sway and maybe have sex to this winter.

    Just listen, it is so lush.

  • Jet Life: Dope St. Jude’s global hustle and contribution to black knowledge production

    Monday April 10th saw Dope St. Jude and Kyla Phil, pulling up in Roeland street to scoop me en route to Dope St’s birthday dinner. We sped off towards Cape Town’s suburbs and a sanctified celebration of the life of this artist from Elsies River. Dope St. Jude gracefully glides through identities, wearing concurring crowns of artist and activist whilst embodying such potency it speaks to power and pleasure. An entertainer by nature, but also an educator through the proliferation of a persona that makes people wys about black girl magic and the inequalities of the beautiful and totally bogus racist Mother City.

    With the gift of keeping it real while rapping, Dope St. Jude is currently in Finland with Angel-Ho, performing, and contributing to the conversation about alternative platforms and methodologies for knowledge production on a panel at In-between: Art, Education and Politics in the Post-Welfare state, a week long event hosted in conjunction with Chimurenga and The Pan African Space Station at Checkpoint Helsinki. Her new EP is set to drop in the near future and the album artwork is already out. The images reference archetypes of femininity and Africa, and while contributing to the discourse around representations of black women, they also contribute to the refreshing representations of blackness and Africa coming from African artists. Through using our heritage and beautiful brown skin to tell stories these images enter a pantheon of other artworks rewriting the meaning of blackness a la the Noirwavers who set 2015 alight with beautiful artworks featuring blackness and Africa in regal, opulent sometimes even religious regalia.

    When you are born with dark skin and/or a vagina, your identity becomes something beyond you, potent in its ability to alienate and antagonise. These stereotypes are laid before us, having been produced and reproduced by misogynist white media and patriarchal white capital for centuries. But we are making a future where the truth about blackness, queerness, gender and Africa have representation in all spheres of experience; music, visuals, text, print, photography and so the list must go on until equality is won. It is this knowledge that artists like Dope Saint Jude propagate, and this is why her work and persona is so important. This reflection of the relationship between art and activism, emphasizes the role of creativity in contributing to changing ignorant and conservative perspectives. This is how artists like Dope St Jude are impacting our world, and it is a most wondrous and welcome change.

    dope st jude

  • The Emancipation of Angel Ho

    The Cape Town based electronic artist Angel Ho made an international splash last year with his hard- hitting debut EP Ascension.  That release consisted of five sinister experimental tracks and was mastered by Arca, whose previous collaborators have included Kayne West and Bjork.  Angel Ho is also the co-founder of NON records, an internet based collective with a mission to work ‘’ across genre and geography to unite politically and sonically forward-thinking musicians in an ongoing exploration of Pan-African identity in the twenty-first century’’. On Soundcloud, NON has been building an impressive body of work, with its geographically disparate artists united by their brutal yet danceable music.

    Angel Ho’s latest release Emancipation, a collaboration with Desire Marea, continues this trend. A ‘bootleg collection’ he has described it as “tracks that became an emancipating, unifying experience for everyone listening.  It is for our relative black queer trans communities, I want us to exist without compromise and to be brave everyday’. This hopeful sentiment presides over the collection of four dark, pulverising new songs and remixes.  The addictive ‘Clocccc’ sounds like it was recorded inside a machine gun, while ‘I Don’t Want Your Man’ twists a song by Keyshia Cole until it sounds like she is presiding over the apocalypse. And it’s all wrapped together with Chino Amobi’s opulent cover art, which shows golden dragons writhing through a surreal blizzard.

    Currently, many underground electronic artists are making explicitly political releases.  Already this year, new albums from ANOHNI and Fatima Al Qadiri are confronting catastrophic global warming, drone warfare and state terrorism head on. Although the political themes in Angel Ho’s work are more subtle, its sense of dread and violence is utterly contemporary. One of his best works ‘Solidarity’ responded to the 2015 Fees Must Fall movement, eloquently capturing the tumult of repression and rebellion. It was loaded onto Soundcloud with an image of a police riot vehicle doused in flame.  Like this photo, Angel Ho and NON are a snapshot of a chaotic time, both dangerous and thrilling.