SOUTH AFRICA'S Sweat. X – MC Spoek Mathambo and studio boffin Markus Wormstorm – have been making waves with their highly original, highly sexual take on Miami Bass and Booty House (“Go black, go low, go fast/ Go pussy, go titties, go ass!”). I met up with Markus prior to a solo DJ set in Brussels at the end of the duo’s recent European tour.
JT: You’re in Brussels. Belgium seems to have recently discovered Nu Rave: is that a good thing?
MW: Ha ha ha ha. I’m kind of two ways about it – to me, Nu Rave is a fashion concept, what is it, summer 2007? And it kind of went hand-in-hand with a dance music revival, and a lot of things were classified as Nu Rave, whereas to be blunt to me it’s oh-so-passe right now. I’m really into dark colours and leathers at the moment. But, I dig the attitude: the party harder frame of mind.
JT: When Sweat. X play, what do you want the audience to think? What do you want them to come away feeling?
MW: We want our live show to be a very dirty thing. We want to create the feeling of some sort of African sex ritual gone wrong. We love performing at floor level, mixing with the people, getting bumped and punched and kissed. I love getting swarmed. We’ve been performing together for a while now and we’ve reached a point where we’re really confident and we can really just fuck around. We’ll just leave loops running and run around the crowd and slap asses - climb back on stage and do some more shit. It’s a very interactive thing.
JT: Where’s Spoek tonight?
MW: He’s probably got to do some chores around the house! He’s got a really demanding grandmother. He’s Ndebele, he’s royalty – I mean a lot of people claim that in Africa. But because he’s the youngest male in an Ndebele family it’s really not done for him to leave the house. He’s supposed to look after his Grandma and his mum and that’s probably what he’s doing right now.
JT: Does that play havoc with your tour schedule?
MW: No, not really man. But his grandma doesn’t like me and I don’t have much to say to her either! She’s like 90 - we just glare at each other. Her whole thing is she can’t understand why they need him to fly around – she’s sure there are enough singers, you know what I mean [chuckles].
JT: And what does she think of the music?
MW: She doesn’t get it man. I mean we’ve recorded some stuff at his house – she’ll just open the door and just stand there and look at us. Like something out of a Lynch movie - fucking eerie.
JT: People are talking about a bit of a South African scene, with guys like you and The Bulgarian getting known internationally. Do you feel part of a movement?
MW: Definitely. My contemporaries and I, when we started doing stuff back in ’99, we sort of set the cornerstones in a lot of ways for electronic music [in South Africa]. I have a studio in Cape Town called Say Thank You Studios, and we do a lot of production, so it’s like an outlet for a lot of artists… One of my partners owns one of the biggest nightclubs in Cape Town, The Assembly. Also we did a lot of shows – a night called Shadow Works, a night called Bookers – and it’s really something we had to build up, the scene of say 2,000-3,000 people that we have now in Cape Town, that’s all off our work. There weren’t bands coming out [from Europe] – we were left to our own devices.
JT: Who else should people be listening out for from South Africa?
MW: Oh man, Felix Laband. I mean Felix is a genius – he’s got a bit of a [self]-destructive streak, but I think he’s one of the greatest musicians we’ve had in a long time.
JT: Do you feel any affinity with other people who are mixing electronic music with sounds from Africa, say Baraka som Sistema?
MW: I’d have to say no. We do African music because we’re from Africa. I don’t think we’ve at any point set out to sneak in a couple of bongos into a song to give it that ‘ethnic’ feel.
JT: It’s African because you are?
MW: Exactly. And I don’t think we’ve ever thought of designing it to be that.
JT: You’ve said [what Sweat. X is doing] is not IDM, it’s not pushing boundaries, you just want people to have a good time. You’re obviously intelligent guys – some of the photo shoots you’ve done are pretty ironic. Do you want people to see the joke as well?
MW: So much of our stuff is based on private jokes between us. I guess you can’t help sneaking that irony into it. I mean we are indie dudes and we are allowed to do whatever we feel like. But do you mean as far as the history of South Africa goes?
JT: I don’t know…
MW: Spoek’s funny, Spoek says we’re like the Apartheid After Party. And what’s this other shit he says? He says we’re a 20-metre acryclic painting of a black hand holding a white hand… We did this one song – do you know what BE is? Black Empowerment. We did this track called ‘Markus Wormstorm is on some straight BE shit’. I think that’s about as political as we’ve got.
JT: What’s happening next with Sweat. X? Any plans for an album?
MW: We’ve got two new labels – we’re still in the process of getting everything together, but we’re putting some stuff out in the States, something called the Saviour and Messiah EP, and we’re doing the Throwing Shade EP and Throwing Shade album later in the year.
JT: Do you get many requests to remix other people?
MW: Yeah, we do get asked and we do ask other people, but nothing ever seems to materialise. We haven’t done anything yet. I really want to do something with Game Boy/Game Girl, these kids from Melbourne, Australia. It’s like this big guy and these two girls and this producer called Miami Horror. I think they are awesome.
JT: If you were forced to sum up Sweat. X in one sentence, how would you do it?
MW: Chasing the season till our blood runs cold.
