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LP
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VIA 010LP
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"This is an album made during a crucial period in South Africa's history during which there was a palpable feeling of a slow turning towards the collapse of the apartheid state side by side with an increasingly well-organized culture of resistance through the formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and various affiliated bodies. However, as a result, there was increased pushback from the state security establishment, a turning to dirty tricks and the formation of hit squads whose members murdered and tortured many of our friends and created chaos throughout South Africa as well as neighboring countries. This album is situated in this political environment however it took advantage of the new do-it-yourself music technologies available at that time. Technologies that made it possible to make and release records without interference from traditional record company executives. Two musician friends of mine pooled their resources after their respective bands had broken up. Ivan Kadey (National Wake) and Lloyd Ross (Radio Rats) built an eight-track recording studio control room and fitted it out in a second-hand caravan and called it Shifty... All the work on this album was completed there, mainly after hours and mostly alone.... Influences of 1970s progressive/kraut/and psychedelic rock combined with mbaqanga bass styles, early reggae/dub and Indian tabla rhythms. Stockhausen, early Zappa and Holgar Czukay were radio text and shredding influences, and Chris Cutler's band Henry Cow & Art Bears helped me see a way to political expression. Mostly though was the exciting post-punk and no-wave music coming through to us from Europe and America: bands like This Heat, the Mekons, Raincoats, Sonic Youth, and Pere Ubu were immensely important to me.... Most important at that time was the influence of sound recordings I had made and experiences garnered from working as a sound recordist on documentary films. These financed my work and later the studio and were consistent employment throughout the 1980s. Film work also enabled me to experience much of South Africa that was hidden from most. The track 'Independence Day' is a good example; drawn from some time spent in the rural homeland of Venda. This then was the first full length Kalahari Surfers album -- completed in summer of 1984 it was taken to EMI pressing plant but rejected by the cutting engineer as being 'political, pornographic and anti-religious.' Chris Cutler at Recommended Records took up the challenge and released the album through his label. He wrote the original liner note." -- Warrick Sony, 2025 Johannesburg
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