SVBKVLT’s Osheyack and Nahash join forces on the ‘Club Apathy’ EP. Hear the frenzied rhythms of ‘Less Than A Pound Of Flesh’ now

More info: https://djmag.com/music/premiere-osheyack-nahash-less-pound-flesh

Club Apathy

Premiere: Osheyack & Nahash ‘Less Than A Pound Of Flesh’

Video for 'I Don't Feel My Legs' youtu.be/FbdaNVrmHhE

In South Africa, the Ama Gogela is large bee known for its strength and ferociousness. Durban trio Phelimuncasi use this avatar as a metaphor for their music. "We believe our music is irresistible, you can't sleep or chill while it's playing," they explain. "The same thing happens when that bee hits you hard. Once it stings you, you can't manage it, it's painful. It's like our songs - once you listen, you can't stop."

"Ama Gogela" follows Phelimuncasi's acclaimed 2020 debut "2013-2019", and once again spotlights the dynamism of Durban's globally prestigious gqom scene. Based in the Mlaszi township, vocalists Malathon, Makan Nana and Khera initially came together in 2012, driven by a desire to illustrate and soundtrack their leftist activist work. Together with some of their neighborhood's most influential producers, they've become notorious for releasing some of Durban's most exceptional music, harnessing gqom's dancefloor futurism and South Africa's ancient theatrical and storytelling traditions simultaneously.

This comprehensive full-length again links Phelimuncasi with regular collaborators DJ MP3 and DJ Scoturn, adding locals DJ Nhlekzin, DJ Ndakx, and SVBKVLT-signed South Korean producer NET GALA as a wildcard. And despite the range of individual talent, the album is exceptionally cohesive, woven together by the trio's conversational call-and-response vocals and unforgettable energy. Phelimuncasi's philosophy is evident immediately on 'I don't feel like legs', as the three MCs alternate between their local language isiZulu and English over police sirens, thick bass and dense percussive chatter. It serves as a call to action for anyone listening, whether you're able to unpack the lyrics or not - like the album's namesake, it's got a sting that won't let you escape.

NET GALA's idiosyncratic sounds underpin the early highlight 'Ngiphupha Izinto', linking ballroom rhythms with early electronic squelches and psy-trance bass to accompany Phelimuncasi's dextrous lyrical back-and-forth. After that brief detour, we're back in Durban with the DJ Scoturn-produced 'Maka Nana', where throaty-voiced MC Bhejane joins the trio for his first guest spot, gurgling bafflingly over gqom staple syncopated toms and ruffled drones. DJ Ndaxy crafts sneak-attack hooks out of mbira clangs on 'Kolamula Ukusa', while Scoturn turns in an inverted bass-heavy slither on 'Uyaphi WeNano', allowing guest vocalist Mafethan the space to shine.

Phelimuncasi manage the impossible on "Ama Gogela", meticulously crafting music that's revolutionary and educational without losing sight of the dancefloor. It's party music that's addictive and indelible, fueled by opposition, dissent and a textured understanding of South Africa's artistic past, present and future.

Phelimuncasi - I Don't Feel My Legs (prod DJ Nhlekzin)

“Jakuzure Butoh" is Japanese producer KΣITO's striking take on gqom. KΣITO combines the thundering intensity of gorge and the pulsating rhythms of gqom into rugged, brooding beats. These are seven club churners, set to entrance listeners in their layers of heavy bass and percussion.

Mastering: Enyang Urbiks 
Cover: Wenzogg 
Simo Uma mixed by jondu

KΣITO - Shinkai

Fresh heat outta Kyoto, a return to @svbkvlt finds @rilla-almadella delving further into the uneasy realms of rhythmic experimentation. 

Sporting remixes from Nahash, Tra Tra Trax’ Bitter Babe and Gorong Gorong’s Kadapat, ‘Yukou / 遊光’ leaves genre boundaries decimated in the pursuit of breakbeat and dembow abstraction. In the case of our premiere, a dancehall rhythm quickly descends into rattling, acid-tinged maelstrom. 

'Yukou / 遊光' is out October 26th on SVBKVLT.

Pre-order: svbkvlt.bandcamp.com/album/yukou-ep

Yukou / 遊光  EP

Premiere: Rilla - Aoi [SVBKVLT]

Since his first productions emerged back in 2010, Munchi has put his own spin on everything he's approached, bending moombahton into breakcore and creating moombahcore fusing skullstep and trap and making skulltrap, and curving bachata and merengue … . A voracious listener, he's been able to absorb sounds from across the diaspora - from reggeton and baile funk to Dutch bubbling and Chicago juke - and effortlessly engineer his own twist, creating tracks and mixes with a journalistic hunger for storytelling and contextual deconstruction. Blogger and musicologist Wayne Marshall even coined a separate genre for Munchi's diverse spread of genre-agnostic productions back in 2010: Munchiton. Since then, Munchi has worked with M.I.A. and Pharell Williams among others, and remixed everyone from Skrillex to Nguzunguzu, Noisia to Buraka.


 "I Love Mambo" was put together in 2010 for Dave Quam's notorious It's After The End Of The World blog. It was Munchi's first proper mixtape, and matched a handful of his original productions with his favorite tracks from the Dominican Mambo canon, that had evolved throughout the 2000’s after merengue ... even got more stripped down with live instruments replaced with digital sounds with the use of daws like fl studio. Munchi was fascinated by this music at the time, downloading everything he could get his hands on, scraping the internet's darkest corners for "the cheapest, cheesiest, dirtiest, most Fruityloops-ish" tracks. He laments that this era has come and gone, leaving "polished, pretentious and almost soulless" reggaeton to dominate the landscape. "At least when the rhythms were extremely raw you could feel the energy and spirit in it," he says. "It felt like it was alive and breathing." Listening now, the mix sounds as raw, fresh and vital as it did back then, brushing the dust off an often forgotten and certainly misunderstood moment in the history of Dominican music. At any moment the tracks sound so brittle they could collapse completely, only to be bolstered by a swift beat flip, vocal chop or cheeky bass drop. Over the course of an hour, Munchi accompanies us on a thrill ride through a genre that's left an indelible mark on dance music throughout the Caribbean and further afield. … "I Love Mambo" serves as a critical missing link. Munchi's "Detonao EP" is a collection of unreleased material recorded in Rotterdam between 2008 and 2010, and is among the most experimental, minimal and uptempo material Munchi has put his name to. Here he purposefully approximates the kind of jerky, plasticated speed dance that used to dominate the Dominican scene, offering his own spin on the mambo sound. Each track is unsettlingly clean, assembled from detuned toybox pianos, radio sting voices and cheap, groggy horns: opening track 'Damu Mambo' crashes into view thru hollow clunks, horror movie voices, pained air horns, glass smashes and rolling snares before ceding to looped vocals and "X-Files" whistles.In the wrong hands, this chaotic assemblage would be as playable as nails on a chalkboard, but Munchi's genius lies in his ability to massage almost anything into a coherent groove. There are even parallels to be drawn with Portugal's wiry batida sound, and Tanzania's hi-nrg singeli (just check those pacy percussive sounds on 'Comenzo El Party'). There's a sense that Munchi is aware of everything existing in the same continuum, shuffling through Dutch bubbling scrapes and bassline womps on 'Luis Esta Seguroski VIP', and mind-altering 'Percolator' trills on the hypnotic 'Ayoba Mambo'. A history lesson and wild-eyed cultural mashup that'll leave you breathless, "Detonao" is proof that Munchi is operating in a league of his own.

Que Maldito Disco

Boomkat Product Review:

Heavy-duty Indian soundsystem carnage by its leading proponent DJ Smiley Bobby, on Uganda’s immense NNT - unmissable for anyone wowed by recent videos of Indian sound clashes, priming the label for incoming heat by DJ TSR.

A proper mazza from Maharashtra State in Western India, DJ Smiley Bobby’s ‘Dhol Tasha Drum Exercises’ presents nearly an hour of up-to-the-second, electronic re-interpretations of ceremonial drums. It’s a full-frontal example of the rave energies in BRIC countries currently catching fire internationally, paralleling innovative mutations of Baile funk in Brazil or from the Svbkvlt lot in China with a ruthlessly rough brand of dancefloor discipline that sharply bends tradition into the hot present. Yr ears will not deceive you - DJ Smiley Bobby’s gear is frankly some of the sickest we’ve heard in a minute and we expect this introduction to be prized by any ravers unsatisfied with Western club music’s increasing tendencies to imitate-not-innovate.

First formed by the late Shri Appasaheb Pendse in the ‘60s, Dhol Tasha Drum exercises were originally performed on a sort of acoustic kettle drum but became electronically adapted in recent years thanks to the likes of DJ Smiley Bobby and peers including DJ Aasif, DJ Ammy, and DJ TSR, the latter of whom is due to drop an album with NNT this year. DJ Smiley Bobby’s introductory session finds the sound at its stripped down and breathless best with a ceaseless battery of drums and percussive madness that truly puts willing bodies thru their paces as the mixtape steps from side A’s 90-110bpm workout to its 150bpm ‘Hard Drum Sound System’ on the flip.

Also kinda mirroring the way DJ Plead has flipped Arabic drum styles, how Bilou XIV have transposed Senegalese mbalax drum patterns onto machine grids, or DJ Diaki’s Malian balani knee-ups, we’re certain this one will light up the pleasure centres of proper dancers everywhere, and dovetail with the sort of thing Beatrice Dillon makes, or anyone who’s been scouting zones where Indian bhangra and UK rave music bump fists, a la Mick St. Clair’s remixes of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

Un-fucking-missable!!!

DJ SMILEY BOBBY - Dhol Tasha Drum Exercises from Maharashtra (sampler)

Polilt

track specially made for my Berghain DJ set, last week.
limited to 100 dl.
wave format

Happy Birthday, Hyperdub.

Berghain Assault

33EMYBW (@wushanmin) is a Shanghai electronic music producer who was recently hand-picked by Aphex Twin to perform for the opening night of The Warehouse Project in Manchester back in September.

33EMYBW releases on one of our favourite labels 'SVBKVLT' --- we strongly advise you all to check out the label's roster. (@svbkvlt)

S.L.F. Versions is out now on transparent vinyl with a neon green outer sleeve with further reworks by Jamaican collective @equiknoxxmusic - Indonesian duo @gabbermodusoperandi and Swedish producer Jonas Rönnberg aka @VARG

BUY / STREAM - https://hndsth.lnk.to/SLFversions

S.L.F. Versions

Two Serpents (33EMYBW Remix)

BUY / STREAM EP

Aïsha Devi - Two Serpents (33EMYBW Remix)

Oppressed, submerged, but packed with tremendous energy — that is how Out of Fashion Boys feels about Beijing as a city, as well as the way it defines itself as a label. As the political and cultural center of China, Beijing radiates such a unique charm that one simply cannot find another Chinese city similar to it. Though Beijing is not the most economically developed city in China, all the cultures that it cultivates will never be completely consumed by market economy. It is able to protect or even hinder a culture from commercialization until its next big explosion. Take the Beijing rock’n’roll scene as an example — it is hard to believe that there is almost a 3-decade gap between its two major explosions. Out of Fashion Boys managed to gather a diverse group of musicians into one record, with assistance of the unique energy of Beijing City. 12 groups of artists the label has previously invited to perform live have come together this time to work on the compilation Out of Fashion Boys Vol.1.
压抑、下沉却又蕴藏了巨大的能量。这是Out of Fashion Boys对北京这座城市的感受，也是他们对厂牌自己的描述。北京作为中国的政治、文化中心拥有着独一无二的魅力，你不可能找到一座和北京相似的城市。虽然北京不是中国经济最发达的城市，但它所产出的所有文化都不会被经济市场所完全消解，它会一直保留或者埋藏文化不被商业化直到下一次的爆发，就像北京的摇滚乐你很难相信它的两次爆发竟然间隔了将近30年的时间。Out of Fashion Boys用北京这座城市的能量把一群音乐人聚集到一张合集中：12组他们曾经邀请的音乐人以北京的印象共同创作这张合集《Out of Fashion Boys Vol.1》。

In this compilation, you will hear the creation by producer Zean, who is currently based in Shanghai. As a Chinese himself, he contributed to this compilation the most clever sonic take on the atmosphere of the Chinese capital. 
You will hear Berlin producer Goro, who sampled China Airlines’ public announcement in his track.
Paris-based producer King doudou set fire to the compilation with lush club beats that are spiced up with oriental flavors. 
Wrack from Tokyo titled his own track as Hot Pot.
合集中有现居上海的制作人Zean，身为中国人的他在情绪上最为巧妙的表达了北京的氛围；
你还能听到采样了中国航空播音的柏林制作人Goro；
来自巴黎的制作人King doudou创作了极具东方色彩的俱乐部音乐；
东京的Wrack用火锅命名了他的作品。

@zefgirlclub 
@zeanmusic 
@airmax97 
@falsewitness 
@kingdoudou 
@merca-bae
@jaymiesilk 
@mojogoro 
@lao 
@dehousy 
@wrack90 
@asemanual 

Mastered by LAO
Art works by Heimer

OUT OF FASHION BOYS VOL.1

GORO - Air China

Absolutely killer 10-tracker debut album on Hakuna Kulala by Russian avant-club producer and DJ Wulffluw XCIV. Designed to cause serious cerebral and physical damage on dance floors across the world.
Innovative and genre-blending, Wulffluw XCIV incorporates industrial/EBM techno and synthetized tones with dembow rhythms, kuduro and gqom to forge layered corporeal music with no geographical borders that feels vast. Each track is richly textured, surgically produced with agility and fierce finesse connecting a barrage of sounds and cultural influences plus high doses of playful and visual appeal. Wulffluw drops multiple emotional club bangers that are intriguing and jittery, marked by the front, harsh and unrelenting percussions, and enriched with repetitive sonic explosions, haunting vocals, cyberpunk ambience, and emphasized loud-soft dynamics. Standout tracks include Ash Bay and the psy-trancy Endelea.
With this album (was he in residency here in Kampala?) Wulffluw XCIV's reveals a vigorous artistic sensitivity defined by his interest in connecting disparate communities and diasporic styles. In the past he has collaborated with musicians from all over the world, among others Ink Midget, Santa Muerte & Rafa Maya, Blastah, Nahshi, Yoshitaka Hikawa, AN System, Icy Flame, and Whiterose.

Ngoma Injection

Durilla

Nyege Nyege Tapes is a Kampala based label exploring, producing and releasing outsider music from around the region.

For bookings email: tapes@nyegenyege.com

Phelimuncasi - I Don't Feel My Legs (prod DJ Nhlekzin)

Nyege Nyege Tapes

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