Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the Writing category.
Two Great Guitar albums Pt3 (clean and NOT serene): Ahleuchatistas & Sajjanu
Filed in Guitar,Music,Writing, July 14, 2010, 1:13 pmRighto, i’m not even going to pretend not to have dropped the ball completely over the last couple of months, let’s just say that i’ve been a bit jaded as far as music is concerned. If there was one thing i did cultivate a keen appreciation for, musically, i would say that it’s a kind [...]
Two Great Guitar Albums pt.2: Andre v Rensburg,Nels Cline
Filed in Albums,Guitar,Music,Writing, July 20, 2009, 9:10 pmIt seems to be becoming a habit of mine to write about guitar albums – no surprise there – but also to tackle them in pairs. If you missed my previous lyrical waxing about Marc Ribot and Fred Frith, you can find it here. Andre van Rensburg – Unfinished Cities (South of the Border, 2008) [...]
Benguela Reunion gig
Filed in Live,Music,Writing, April 2, 2009, 12:37 pmLast night, being the first of April of 2009, brought another instance of what a friend of mine jokingly dubbed the ‘Springbok Nude Girls syndrome’; ie the recent tendency of South African bands who had already split up, to play reunion gigs. As an aside, i suspect this is happening for the simple reason that [...]
Noise into Punk Times Two
Filed in Albums,Music,Writing, February 5, 2009, 5:18 pmThese are both fairly old albums, which may or may not have fully slipped under the radar by now as far as general interest is concerned, but both of them, I feel, have been great in terms of demonstrating that the reductionist ethos of punk rock does not necessarily have to result in impoverishment on [...]
Sticky Antlers
Filed in Music,Writing, December 10, 2008, 4:39 pmPretoria, to me at least, generally seems like something of a cultural wasteland, where derivative white man’s 12 bar blues seems to have a particular resonance. Yet, in these seemingly adverse conditions, a small, insular yet wonderfully self-sufficient and inexhaustibly creative group of individuals are creating music, mad collage art and video under the banner [...]
The Ghost in the Machine
Filed in Illustration,Music,Occult,Writing, November 4, 2008, 1:03 pmIt’s always fun to stumble across some strange process that comes about from the interplay of seemingly mundane things, especially things of the electronic variety that occasionally seem to intimate the existence of a very satanic, Ouija board-like dimension ingrained into every circuit board that by now permeates every aspect of our daily lives. A [...]
Two Great Guitar Albums: Marc Ribot, Fred Frith
Filed in Albums,Guitar,Music,Writing, October 29, 2008, 5:10 pmMarc Ribot and Fred Frith are similar guitarists in that they dabble in both austere minimalism (see Marc Ribot’s “Exercises in Futility” – Tzadik, 2008) and frenzied, choppy chaos (see Fred Frith’s work with Bill Laswell and This Heat drummer Charles Hayward in the group Massacre – esp. “Funny Valentine” – also on Tzadik, 1998) [...]
Oslo Oscillator
Filed in Music,Writing, October 24, 2008, 3:26 pmI only ever saw Oslo Oscillator play live twice in Cape Town, but this magnificent self-titled EP, produced by Dirk Hugo, makes me wish i’d done so much more often. Oslo Oscillator is the brainchild of Norwegian guitarist Kaare Ericksen (AKA Jimi), who enlisted several local musicians into creating this swirling, swoony pop gem, which [...]
Pan African Space Station posters
Filed in Live,Music,Prints,Writing, October 17, 2008, 2:55 pmIt has been my honour recently to be commisioned by Ntone Edjabe, editor of the Chimurenga literary magazine, to design five posters for a series of gigs that ran as part of the Pan African Space Station “30-day music intervention” he set up with Neo Muyanga. Among the shows I got to see was a [...]
