Spoek Mathambo, “Control”.
I was chatting with an exchange student from South Africa yesterday who introduced me to Spoek Mathambo. A self-described “township tech” artist, the guy made his first appearance in 2008; the album “Mshini Wam” from which this song is taken came out in 2010.
The video for “Control” has a stunning visual aesthetic that complements the minimalism of the song. It’s quite spooky - fittingly, since “Spoek” translates to “ghost” from Afrikaans. As Dazed Digital writes,
In collaboration with one of South Africa’s most influential photographers Pieter Hugo, and cinematographer Michael Cleary, the new video explores township cults and teen gangs. Shot on location in a squatted train boarding house in Langa, Cape Town, the video features a cast mostly made up of local neighborhood kids who run their own dance troop, Happy Feet.
If you’re looking around for reviews, you’ll find Control - a remake of the Joy Division song “She’s Lost Control” - described as ‘darkwave township house’, and when Spoek Mathambo is mentioned, the term “afro-futurist” is never too far.
Further Sources:
Dusted review of Mshini Wam.
Escalator performing “No Acoustic Music” in 1989
Reminding me of Neue Deutsche Härte group Oomph!, Escalator are a Hungarian EBM (Electronic Body Music) band. The duo’s recent album, “Out Of My Ego”, is its first after 17 years without a publication. Dominion magazine has a summary of their career:
Escalator was formed in 1988 by fifteen-year-old 2RT+TB along with his friend with IGOR404 after becoming obsessed with bands such as Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire, Clock DVA, and Front 242. The band released five albums of electro-industrial crossover - some of which are available for free download on their website - that saw them included alongside Front Line Assembly in the second wave of EBM bands. After ceasing live shows in 1996 the band began to perform sporadically from 2003 onwards at venues around eastern Europe.
Music video for Technopolis by the Yellow Magic Orchestra.
From Wikipedia:
[T]he group sparked a boom in the popularity of electronic pop music (called “Technopop” in Japan) that had an impact similar to that of The Beatles and Merseybeat in 1960s Britain. A testament to the influence of YMO on fashion is how many middle-aged Japanese businessmen still have the “Techno cut” haircut, modeled after the group. […]
Making abundant use of new synthesizers, samplers, sequencers and digital recording technology as it became available, as well as utilizing cyberpunk-ish lyrics sung mostly in English, their popularity and influence extended beyond Japan. Generally the band are highly regarded as pioneers of electronic music, and continue to be remixed and sampled by modern artists.
Music video for Piekūns skrien debesīs by Jauns Mēness.
Jauns Mēness (“New Moon”), founded in 1987, were an influential Latvian folk rock group. Gaining fame after their country’s independence in the early ’90s, they have been praised as an outstanding example of Baltic rock.
After the group disbanded in 1999, founder Ainars Mielavs moved on to a successful solo career. Since 2005, he has been playing again with former members of Jauns Mēness, now under the name “Mielavs un Pārcēlāji”.
The title of the song, Piekūns skrien debesīs, translates to “Falcon flying through the sky”. I was told that it is a - melancholic - war song. A translation on Youtube gives the first lines as “[The] falcon is running through the sky / Wake up brother, the morning is at hand / What will the Northern winds bring? / Thunder or a song?”
Further sources:
Jauns Mēness profile on UPE, Mielavs’ record company.
Kino - Gruppa Krovi (Blood Type); video from the movie “Igla”, starring Kino singer Viktor Tsoi.
“Wish me luck in the fight,” sings Viktor Tsoi, “So I don’t stay here in the grass.” His deep, raspy voice carries a message that you get even if you don’t understand the lyrics. It’s raw, resigned in the light of life’s hardness, and yet carries the warmth of melancholia.
Tsoi was, until his untimely death in a car accident in 1990, the head of the widely popular group Kino. Founded in 1981, they rose to fame in times of political liberalization, and were among the Soviet Union’s first rock superstars, leaving a mark in the country’s music scene that continues to influence their successors today.
Kino started out playing at Kvartirniks - concerts in the homes of fellow musicians - and in the USSR’s only venue for the “bourgeois” rock music, Leningrad’s “Rock Club”. Even their most famous albums, such as Gruppa Krovi, were either recorded at home or in underground studios equipped with second-hand instrumentation.
Yet in the late 80s, Gorbatchov’s politics of Glasnost and Perestroika opened up new opportunities for the federation’s underground bands, and Kino were the first to demand them. “We want changes!,” Tsoi sang in 1989, “It’s the demand of our hearts”; lyrics that inspired a generation and formed a devoted following of “Kinophiles” that left graffiti carrying the message “Цой жив!” (“Tsoi is alive!”) on the walls of Leningrad after the singer’s tragic death.
Further sources:
Russmus has an awesome series of podcasts on the life and work of Viktor Tsoi.
The Russian Wikipedia has an excellent article on Kino, worth reading even in translation.
Boshetunmay.com offers translations of all Kino songs in English.
Khaled, Faudel and Rachid Taha perform Ya Rayah at 1,2,3 Soleils, a unique concert in Paris 1998.
The three singers are widely hailed as the three masters of raï, Khaled and Faudel being called the “King” and “Prince of Raï”, respectively. Although all three singers have their roots in Algeria, Faudel and Taha were born in France, and Khaled was in exile there.
Raï is a form of popular Algerian folk music dating back to the 1930s. It incorporates influences such as rock, reggae, and, more recently hip hop - Faudel is an exemplary for the latter, while Rachid Taha’s music also has a strong punk appeal to it.
Raï is also strongly linked to liberal, even secularist values. In the late 1980s, it was adopted by students as protest music; several of its masters, including Khaled, had to flee the country under threats from radical Islamist groups (which murdered some other musicians).
The song itself, Ya Rayah, is not raï, but chaabi, another form of popular Algerian folk music with more conservative connotations. It is, as Wikipedia nicely describes it, “a ballad of the traveler, the exiled, the longing to come back, the immigrant, the ‘wanderin’ star’.”
