Cape music picks: May 20 2011

Music takes inspiration from everything from local heritage and history to Eurocentric imports this week.

• ‘There are so many scenes that it eventually just gets lame and uninteresting,” muses Xander Ferreira. ‘We’re all scene-d out. So why can’t we just ‘buffet’ things and take a little bit from each of them?” Gazelle’s flamboyant front man is explaining the postmodern method in his band’s genre-surfing ‘Lim Pop’ cultural mash-up. While their penchant for cannibalising Bootsy Collins’ glam funk, Brenda’s township pop and Boney M’s disco grooves into a ‘Chic Afrique’ electro-pop aesthetic has led to accusations of blaxploitation, Gazelle aren’t especially bothered.

  ‘It’s satirical and satire is the only way to speak to people about difficult things,” he shrugs. Audiences can catch Ferreira and sidekick DJ Invisible tread the tightrope between satire and shtick with their full Imperial House of Africa band featuring Grenville Wiliams (bass), Dubmaster China (percussion, ragga raps) and backing dancers and singers at the launch of their Asmeasgobushfire Tour. Two Minute Puzzle showcase their experimental folksy-psychedelic classic rock cocktail in the warm up slot. DJs Nastie Ed and DJ Sideshow share the deck support.
  
  The Assembly, Harrington Street, May 21, 9pm. Entrance is R30 before 9pm, R60 thereafter, R50 (pre-sale).

• ‘I don’t know if it’s an album that you’ll love the second you hear it. But it might be the kind of album that grows on you—.” Pascal Righini muses over The Plastics’ killer album, Shark. Their lead singer shouldn’t sweat it. Produced by indie rock guru Gordon Raphael, the band channel a quirky cocktail of kinetic retro rock influences ranging from Arctic Monkeys to Blur and back. Don’t presume this means they’re prone to sedating their punters with seasonally hip indie dance rock riffs though. The Plastics’ infatuation with nuanced Brit-popped balladry is what sets their romantically literate snapshots of dysfunctional boy/girl relationships apart from the comfortably dumb cynicism of SA’s tragically hip-shaking, skinny jeaned indie rock jet set. ‘We don’t have that vibe at all” says drummer Sasha. ‘We’re not the most fashion conscious people. We do wear semi-fashionable clothes, but we’re not going to look in One Small Seed and go out and buy everything we see, you know?” Captain Stu warms up the crowd with some of their infectious ska-rockers on support.

  Zula Sound Bar & Restaurant, 188 Long Street, Cape Town, May 20, 9pm. Entrance is R40.

• Traditional classical music forms including canon, fugue, rondo, passacaglia and free counterpoint come under the compositional cosh at a rare South African recital of composer Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire by the KEMUS ensemble this weekend. Composed in 1912, the revolutionary work for chamber group and narrator is a superb example of Schoenberg’s ‘atonal’ or ‘free tonal’ compositional style, where the Austrian-American composer first experimented with what he termed ‘the emancipation of dissonance”. Translated? All traditional concepts of harmonic tension and release are discarded, all accepted ‘rules’ of tonality are broken. The result is a emotionally and intellectually challenging listening experience that explores themes ranging from love, sex and violence to crime, religion and blasphemy. A setting of twenty-one German poems, translated from original French, the melodrama calls for the unusual ensemble of narrator (soprano: Vanessa-Tait Jones), flute (doubling on piccolo: Liesl Stoltz), clarinet (doubling on bass clarinet: Becky Stelzner), violin (doubling on viola: Tricia Theunissen), cello (Joachim Müller-Crepon) and piano (Mareli Stolp).

  Endler Hall, c/o Victoria and Neethling Streets, Stellenbosch, May 21, 8pm. Entrance is R75 to R95. Book at Computicket.