JP NATHRASS
It’s commonly accepted that the South African music industry is difficult to break into. Perdeby, however, went looking for a few fairly surreptious bands that are mixing or reinvigorating music genres earning them a mention as up-coming acts you should probably check out.
Muniquin Combine the best elements of aKING and Avenged Sevenfold and you might come close to replicating Muniquin’s sound. This Port Elizabeth-based band consists of Jaco Horak (vocals), Jeandre Fourie (guitar), JP Meiring (guitar), Fanie Niemand (bass) and Jared Bradley (drums). From mellow ballads to hard-hitting rock tracks, Muniquin has released no fewer than nine free songs through their Facebook page. This young band’s talent will leave you devoid of speech – especially the guitar solos by Meiring and Bradley’s fast-paced drums. If you are looking for a young rock band with meaningful lyrics and musical talent many artists would kill for, look no further.
HemelBesem Afrikaans hip-hop artist HemelBesem has been around since 2009 and has released five albums, but has never received the acclaim he justly deserves. HemelBesem has been described as one of the hardest working South African hip-hop artists, the Timbaland of our nation. He has collaborated with a long list of South African artists, including, most recently, Bittereinder and Glaskas. Look out for his new colab album with Isaac Mutant, Double Story. Adding the Freestyle Champion of the 2010 African Hip-Hop Indaba to your playlist is bound to win you some street credit.
OneDaySky A Johannesburg-based alternative band formed in 2008 as Clinton Watts’s (vocals) solo project. After the release of Dancing in Cursive, OneDaySky saw the addition of JP Sing (guitar), Eric Barnfather (guitar), Darren Yen (bass) and Allistair Nel (drums) to the line-up. OneDaySky’s members all come from a diverse musical background and previously played for other local bands including my/epic/vice and Fear of Falling. Their self-titled EP was released as a free download in 2011 and showcases a unique style that is earmarked by Watts’s unique high-pitched voice that never misses a note while being backed by a style of rock that’s hard to place in a specific genre. The band recently released a video cover of Double Take’s “Hot Problems” featuring the band as sock puppets.
No Yellow Lane Driving What do you get when you combine a vocalist who has been performing on the international stage since he was 12, winning the World Champion award at the World Performing Arts Festival, with three cousins and a talented bassist? Enter No Yellow Lane Driving (a Johannesburg-based indie band who describe their sound as “indie strings linking drum and bass with light blue electro undertones”). Pieter Swart Bezuidenhout (vocals), Stehan Steyn (guitar), Pieter Janse van Rensburg (guitar), Jean Claude van Niekerk (bass) and Sterrit Steyn (drums) produce the type of laid back music you can expect to make it to the top of many a local music chart. Their name says it all: this is the type of music you want to listen to while taking a road trip without a care in the world – especially by not making way for impatient drivers who try force you into the yellow lane.
Illustration: Simon Kai-Garvie