/ 1 July 2011

Play-play work

I wouldn’t say there is much difference between work and play. Part of our work is music. So even if I’m not making music, I am thinking about making music.

I listen to a lot. I like to keep my mind quite open because you can get influences from everywhere.

Stand-out artists for me would have to be Calvin Harris, Kanye West and Example. Those guys, I think, are doing great stuff at the moment.

I like West specifically because he was labelled in the hip-hop genre [but] then he came up with the album 808s and Heartbreak. It was a completely new sound in hip-hop. He really pushes the boundaries in his sound. I support that because I think without it music wouldn’t evolve.

I have just finished The Brethren by John Grisham. It’s a fantastic book about government conspiracy. I’m not reading anything [else] at the moment. A friend recently recommended a book called The Doors of Perception [by Aldous Huxley].

My favourite books are murder mysteries. It’s almost like reading a movie — there is always something happening in the pages.

Weird kinds of normal things
My favourite movies are comedies and I am also a fan of horror. But I find that a lot of horror nowadays is just slice, gore and violence. It’s not really scary; it’s disgusting. I like a more psychological horror. But what I like about horror is how realistic you can be in portraying a scary situation because a lot of movies try to focus on weird kinds of normal things.

For comedy, some of my top movies would be Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Pineapple Express. I don’t go out much; I wait for movies to come out on DVD. The last movie I watched was Green Hornet.

My favourite food would be Asian. I am a huge fan of noodle dishes. The Asians just know how to do it right. I am a very good cook. The kinds of dishes that I like cooking are mainly stir-fry.

I am not a huge golfer but I really enjoy this hitting the ball thing. It takes your mind away from things.
But my main sport is basketball. Sometimes you are in the mood to be with yourself and get your mind off things and then golf becomes appropriate. But when you have enough friends over or you are in the mood for getting out and having fun, basketball becomes the one.

I got to play basketball during the hip-hop era when I was listening to a lot of hip-hop and that sport is associated with the genre. So we started to play it and I enjoyed it.

I really like the hustle and bustle of Johannesburg but, when it comes to relaxing, I love the West Coast. We also spend a lot of time in Namibia, Botswana and Kenya. We have got some friends who own a wild-dog research camp in Botswana so we go there to spend time with them. It is so relaxing; it doesn’t have that chaotic feel that a big city has.