‘DJs compact rough and ready chunks of tracks into a relentless but far from seamless inter-textual tapestry of scissions and grafts,” wrote Simon Reynolds in his seminal rave culture critique, ‘Technical Ecstasy” for The Wire back in 1992.
‘It’s a gabbling fucking mess, barely music, but as it swarms out the airwaves to a largely proletarian audience, you know you’re living in the future. ‘Trash’, but I luvvit.”
Fast forward two decades and Reynolds’ hardcore continuum rhapsody reads like a blueprint for electro trash producer Haezer’s attention-deficit disordered soundscapes. Over the past few years the digital punk poster boy has been converting party animals from Oppikoppi to Australia with his anarchic mash-up of pogoing electro-punk rhythms, hardcore tech-house synth squalls, bombastic bass humps and glitch overloaded ghosts in the machine. The appeal in such defiantly Dionysian digital derangement? Reynolds again: ‘a quest to reach escape velocity. Speed-freak youth are literally running away from their problems, and who can blame them?” Alternative chanteuse Inge Beckmann and Afrikaans garage rock god Francois van Coke are the special guests at the launch of his new EP, It’s Not our Fault. It’s Haezer’s last show before he jets off on his ‘Commercial Music is Dead” tour of Europe. Mr Sakitumi, BTeam, Toby2Shoes and Hyphen support. First 300 fans through the door get a free CD.
City Hall, Darling Street, Cape Town, April 26, 9pm. Entrance is R60
How does a conscious hip hop crew survive in a consumerist scene where, as critic Greg Tate famously put it, ‘there’s really nothing to celebrate about hip hop right now but the moneyshakers and the moneymakers – who got bank and who got more”? Well, if you’re Sama-nominated hip-hop heroes Tumi & the Volume you realise that con-shizzle needn’t trump consciousness. ‘Music has a shorter shelf life now. We have become like a fast-food market because of the iPods and music phones,” said Tumi in an interview with the M&G earlier this year.
‘With Pick A Dream it was [about] recognising this and having to make songs that are quick on the surface, but the depth is still in what I say.” Relax. After nine years of keeping it conscious, T&theV aren’t suddenly selling out. They’re just hoping to earn a living. ‘We wanted a big produced album. We wanted our songs to play on radio stations and in your car.” Expect a frenetically funky fusion of melodic raps, Pan Afro futuristic grooves, soulful R&B reanimations, jazzy hip shakers, inspirational roots rap rockers, old skool consumerist critiques and more at their rare Mother City performance.
The Assembly, Harrington Street, East City, April 23, 9pm. Entrance is R40 before 9pm, R60 thereafter, R50 (pre-sale). Website: www.theassembly.co.za Book at www.webtickets.co.za