Publications
Partners
Sorry for the Delay is not a scene record. It will please dubsters & raggamuffins, for sure, but behind the delicious sleeve artwork is a sweetly subversive album for you and me. The jam is over: now, 340ml are “sending a message to destroy your radio” with philosophies, parables and popping basslines. Not like their unlikely idols Rage Against The Machine, mind. Instead, the revolution is merely wondered out loud: “Who conquered HIV? Who colonised the galaxy?”.
“Fairy Tales” applies the same keen lyricism to human nature and... dance music. Indie rock’s obsession with the club scene has provided some miserable misappropriations of late, but this lounge dub take on 2am Sandton is pulled off with irrepressable confidence (and a melodica!). Its main character, a young woman on the prowl may not be "wearing underwear (and that feels strange)," but at least she has a fantastic accordian beat to lose her thoughts in.
It's been a year of comebacks, with Neil Diamond, Ice Cube and even eVoid returning from the studio with their best material in years. What these cats know about albums is that they have to tell themselves like stories, with a beginning, an end and irresistable ups and downs in between. Each of Sorry For The Delay's thirteen chapters does just that, suspending us in dub-dreamstate just long enough for the next, different wave of ideas to wash over us. And that's how a little band from Mozambique's second album can be comfortable, imperious even, among the best releases of the year.
Of course, you could do worse than enlisting the services of Bongo Maffin's Thandiswa Mazwai. Her cameo in the Afro-pop playground of "Make It Happen", and other guest sessions by Tidal Waves and Francophone diva Drean add the spice of life (variety) in spades to an already genre-curious album.
Sure, things change. Coke don’t come in 340ml cans anymore. But the most complete album of the year? That just might.
- Niel Bekker
“Fairy Tales” applies the same keen lyricism to human nature and... dance music. Indie rock’s obsession with the club scene has provided some miserable misappropriations of late, but this lounge dub take on 2am Sandton is pulled off with irrepressable confidence (and a melodica!). Its main character, a young woman on the prowl may not be "wearing underwear (and that feels strange)," but at least she has a fantastic accordian beat to lose her thoughts in.
It's been a year of comebacks, with Neil Diamond, Ice Cube and even eVoid returning from the studio with their best material in years. What these cats know about albums is that they have to tell themselves like stories, with a beginning, an end and irresistable ups and downs in between. Each of Sorry For The Delay's thirteen chapters does just that, suspending us in dub-dreamstate just long enough for the next, different wave of ideas to wash over us. And that's how a little band from Mozambique's second album can be comfortable, imperious even, among the best releases of the year.
Of course, you could do worse than enlisting the services of Bongo Maffin's Thandiswa Mazwai. Her cameo in the Afro-pop playground of "Make It Happen", and other guest sessions by Tidal Waves and Francophone diva Drean add the spice of life (variety) in spades to an already genre-curious album.
Sure, things change. Coke don’t come in 340ml cans anymore. But the most complete album of the year? That just might.
- Niel Bekker
