BLK JKS, "After Robots" (2009)

As there is a backlog of material I have been listening to recently, I am going to dedicate the next series of posts to briefly describing some of the more interesting releases of the past nine months. Here is another.

I don't possess too much South African indie guitar music in my library, which is good enough reason to talk about BLK JKS. An even better reason would be the fact that they have released one of the more promising debut albums of the year.

BLK JKS are four musicians from Johannesburg and Soweto. Having pricked people's interest with their home released debut single "Lakeside" two years ago they were snapped up by the ubiquitous Secretly Candadian label who hired Brandon Curtis (ex Secret Machines) to produce their debut album which was released in March. They are now in the middle of a gruelling US tour whilst the label get the PR wheels greased with predictable soundbites such as "BLK JKS, the South African TV on the Radio".

Their music is a successful hybrid of influences including post-rock, new wave, prog, reggae and indigenous afrikaans. It is meadering and subtle in a pleasing way rather than explosive, which is probably just as well as these songs are not intended to hook you immediately, and if they are, they should write some better hooks!

They will be touring the UK in November, check out their website for details.

www.blkjks.com
youtube/blkjks - lakeside
lastfm/blkjks - after robots