Last year Honest Jon’s (on their usual worldwide underground tip) released a compilation titled Shangaan Electro: New Wave Dance Music From South Africa and exposed the world to the South African dance and music movement known as Shangaan Electro. Floating around 180 bpm and based around marimba instrumentation, it’s a somewhat mad genre that I find preferable to footwork or juke, if you can compare them.
Guardian Music Blog produced a nice introduction to it which you can still read online here, as did Dazed Digital which you can get at here.
Madness. The good news of the last fortnight though is that some of our favourite producers (including Shake, who’s probably the most played artist on Awkward Movements Sessions) have collaborated on a couple of plates as a homage to the musical style. Not a whole lot of info on how this came about but the first two plates have dropped and as well as Shakir’s offering have turned up quality tunes by Mark Ernestus of Basic Channel fame and Oni Ayhun. Joints from Villalobos & Max Loderbauer, Peverelist, Theo Parrish and Burnt Friedman among those tat look to be forthcoming.