Michelle Matthews
‘The future of music is in dance music.” Promoter Kim Saville, although a self- confessed rock fan, is savvy when it comes to market trends. Realising that “people will always dance”, the exuberant, opportunistic music-lover started easing her way into dance culture. In 1998 Saville released the first Future Sound of Cape Town CD, a groundbreaking yet doomed album. “We made a lot of mistakes,” admits Kim. “The tracks were too long – it was a mixed album. We had no individual tracks, hence no radio support.”
In 1999 Saville hooked up with the young and spunky Trenton Birch, Anti Gravity member and recent Communications graduate, and formed Beatroot Music to fulfil Beatroot’s aims of developing South African music and taking it to the world. And The Second Coming, the follow-up Future Sound of Cape Town CD, is the album they believe will make it internationally.
The Second Coming is an eclectic album, leading one to ask what exactly is Cape Town’s sound? It seems to be a rather nebulous concept. “The guys are still testing the water,” explains Trenton. “It’s a new scene here. I think by the time we do the next album, we’ll probably get a ‘sound’ coming from Cape Town.”
Some of the more global sounds on the album come from the house tunes, such as Roger Goode’s crowd-pleaser Coffee. Subtitled The Cappucino Mix, it is sweet froth underscored by a heart-palpitating kick of a beat. The gorgeous Free Your Mind by Spanky is a classic house track pegged as the first big hit off the album.
“I wouldn’t say that all of the tracks on the album are particularly uniquely South African,” says Trenton, “although some of the tracks have an African feel.” Debass touches on this subtly with a bongo loop over a traditional house rhythm, while Jorge Carlos goes safari on dye@koke. Imagine sunset sounds at the watering hole shot through with a pumping bass beat. “And then some are straight-up African,” adds Trenton, “like Nagual’s Bayeza.”
Nagual have the kind of image that people typically associate with Cape Town. They wear crystals, they talk slowly, they smile a lot and they’re a live trance band. Trance is huge with laid-back Capetonians, who flock to parties every weekend to dance barefoot under the moon. But Nagual are far from wafty – they put their didgeridoo through a distortion pedal. The recent addition of Zimbini Msensane and Lucky Paliso has helped the group move towards the “authentically African” sound that they’ve been trying to achieve.
A surprise inclusion on The Second Coming is a straightforward kwaito track by 18-year-old Liks. Kwaito is usually associated with Johannesburg and it’s clear in conversation with Liks and Michael Manitshana (aka Debass), his composer/producer, that the inspiration for Why Why Why had filtered down from up north. There are only two things that make this track recognisably Capetonian: the Xhosa medium and the pacifistic lyrics. “I write about love, peace and happiness,” says Liks shyly. “I want to be an example, a role model. That’s why I’m serious.”
The variety builds up with drum’n’bass, acid jazz, trip-hop and “Euro-kwaito” in the mix. The all-embracing make-up of The Second Coming is both its strength and its weakness. As Manitshana says, “This album is more representative than the first one, which was more like ‘The Future Sound of Cape Town House.'” But the diversity of the album could also be off-putting to the conventional adherent of the cliquey dance scene.
The Second Coming does, however, have several things in its favour. Most importantly, it was mastered in London, resulting in a quality recording with excellent clarity and a solid bottom end. Trenton describes hearing the master, “When I put the CD on I had tears in my eyes – the tracks just came to life.” It has the Future Sound branding, known worldwide through compilations such as The Future Sound of London and its Paris equivalent. It has the enthusiastic Birch travelling from Sydney to London to New York, touting the product to record companies around the world. It also has the nifty addition of a CDRom which includes a video of interviews with the musicians and local artist Paul du Toit’s groovy doodles, which reflect the studied naivety of the dance scene. And, of course, it has several top-class tunes and some potential hit singles too.
The Second Coming: The Future Sound of Cape Town is available from all good music stores