 | Storm Thorgerson: Pink Floyd, Biffy Clyro & Machineri
Evan Milton
Photographer and conceptual artist Storm Thorgerson has been creating iconic album covers for over four decades. Now, he's exhibiting classics and new pieces in a rare Cape Town show.
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 | Stuart Bird's 'Promise Land' at the Goodman Gallery
Grace O'Malley
I always enjoy going to the Goodman.* Its cool grey floors and small, unassuming size never fails to fill me with a sense of familiarity and calm. The space crackles with the audio component of Calling (2011), a digital film edited from cellphone footage, showing Bird burning graffiti onto the cement floor of a rooftop parking lot with a rather rudimentary gas canister hooked up to what I can only describe as a type of flame thrower. This amateurish video of Bird, seemingly alone, methodically writing his message (‘counter revolution') in concentric circles is a testament to the highly-refined yet rebellious nature of this exhibition.
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 | Yakal'inkomo: The legacy of Winston 'Mankuku' Ngozi
Evan Milton
Rekindling the 'Sax Summit' concerts of yesteryear, veteran musicians Barney Rachabane and Khaya Mahlangu will join local talents Mark Fransman and Victor Kula for 'Yakal'inkomo: The Legacy', a celebration of the music of Winston 'Mankunku' Ngozi.
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 | Dan Patlansky Album Launch Review
Ruan Scott
It's hard to believe Dan Patlansky is only 30 years of age when you hear him play the blues. With more soul than any CRC church he really gets in that trippy zone pulling chords and facial expressions like he has being mastering the art of the blues for centuries.
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 | Holiday Murray: MK, Malawi and Up The Creek
Evan Milton
Three years after they formed, Cape Town four-piece Holiday Murray have criss-crossed the country - and played across our borders - to share their acoustically-driven rock. Now they prepare for the Bacardi Up The Creek festival.
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 | Stuart Taylor: Funny Money
Poppy Gilsenan
Whoever said 'Money ain't a thing' was either loaded or drunk. Stuart Taylor's new solo show ‘Money's too Tight to Mention' sounds a bit more like it and instilled some much-needed humour into my barren bank account.
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 | Van Coke Kartel - 'Wie's Bang' review
Murray Walker
Van Coke Kartel's fourth studio album say's 'Wie's Bang' on the cover. No question mark. Because it's not a question, it's more a statement and what it really says is 'Ek's Bang' because the Kartel come out of the starting blocks at one hell of a speed. Like the bulls in Pamplona, so scared, they're angry. Thrashing with precision at topics like belief, culture, politics, laziness and growing up while standing on the thin line the world finds itself on between global catastrophe and the status quo.
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 | Spoek Mathambo: 'Mshini Wam' goes SubPop
Evan Milton
Fresh off the plane from dates in Sweden and Brazil, and signing an American release deal for his second album, Mzansi's Spoek Mathambo starts 2012 by playing live at the 151st L'Ormarins Queen's Plate this past weekend.
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 | Steve Newman: Guitar master celebrates 60
Evan Milton
Guitar legend Steve Newman celebrates his 60th birthday in Cape Town before a year of ongoing local and international tours.
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 | Die Antwoord: Out of this world Zef
Ruan Scott
What's to say about Die Antwoord except that these guys live in another dimension on another planet in a galaxy so next level that we as earthlings can't comprehend it?
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 | The Kongos: Only Joking from Phoenix to SA
Evan Milton
The Kongos - four South African descended brothers now resident in Phoenix, USA - return for a madcap tour across the country with their father, 1960s hit-maker, John Kongos.
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 | Kode9: Beyond dubstep, Hyperdub comes to South Africa
Evan Milton
Kode9, born Steve Goodman, is a man who could easily be subjected to five full-length feature interviews without any danger of overlap. There's Kode9, the musician who redefined the darker fringes of electronic dub music with his first release, 'Memories of the Future' (Hyperdub) and continues to chart its outer reaches with 'Black Sun' (Hyperdub, 2011). There's the founder of Hyperdub, started in 2001 to release his early music and mutating into one of the most significant record labels for contemporary electronic music. There's Steve Goodman, Philosophy PhD and, also the lecturer at the University of East London (the one in England, with a School of Sciences, Media, and Cultural Studies, not the one in the Eastern Cape). He's also a member of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, the sound-art collective AudInt and the author of 'Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect and the Ecology of Fear' (MIT Press,2009), a book informed by post-structuralist and Afro-futurist theories, and dealing with how sound has been deployed by governments, the military and others to produce discomfort and fear. Plus, of course, there's Kode9 the DJ, about to be showcased at sets across the country, starting at the Rezonance festival.
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 | London Road: A touching human story
Murray Walker
The lights go up and an old lady dodders onto the stage looking somewhat bewildered. I thought she might topple over as she swings her head around surveying the room. She speaks in a most unpleasant screech; I find it tough to hear what she is saying. Her name is Rosa Kaplowitz. The scene is a basement hovel belonging to Stella and it has just been ransacked. Rosa is down there, five stories below her Sea Point apartment because of a faulty pipe she’s decided to inspect.
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 | Isochronous 'Inscape' Album Review
Murray Walker
Isochronous formed in 2006 and it took a few years for them to gather the momentum they currently enjoy. Having said that I think they’re in this awkward middle-ground locally that can easily bog a band down. Think Taxi Violence, Ashtray Electric, even aKING has slipped into it now. A space where you’re well respected by those in the know but pretty much ignored by everyone else. It’s a brutal space and I sincerely hope they manage to escape it because I think Isochronous is nothing short of brilliant.
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 | Guy Buttery: Cape Town Folk Fest - and a new vinyl LP
Evan Milton
Award-winning fingerstyle guitarist Guy Buttery co-headlines the inaugural Cape Town Folk and Acoustic Music Festival, celebrating a new take on the legendary folk gatherings - and to launch his new limited release vinyl record.
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