BLK JKS are a seminal force in the South African underground and, after an extended hiatus, the Johannesburg foursome - championed by The Mars Volta and TV On The Radio (amongst many others) - return with a groundbreaking new album.
The story of BLK JKS reads like a veritable rock’n’roll legend. For a couple of years around the end of the 00’s, the enigmatic South African rock quartet was the darling of the underground scene. Apparently “discovered” by Diplo in South Africa, they went on to meet and befriend everyone from The Mars Volta to TV On The Radio, two bands they were often compared to. They jammed with The Roots, snapped pics with Pharrell Williams and hung out with Lou Reed at the SXSW festival in Texas. Their debut album “After Robots” went on to blow down the walls of rock’n’roll Jericho with its heady yet seamless mix of post-apocalyptic African funk rock, jazz, kwaito, folk, renegade dub, psych prog-rock, TV channel hopping, internet surfing, mbaqanga, soul and pretty much everything else in between. Confidently pushing one golden envelope through another the band began captivating a cult following for their music worldwide.
In 2021 with “Abantu / Before Humans” this present has a fiercely retro-futuristic fresh moniker: Afropunk. These brothers just want to jam. To say BLK JKS poured gas on the fire down below or lit the flames that created the soundtrack for the nascent Afropunk movement in their home country of South Africa especially… would not be too far off the mark.
Released: May 2021
Cat: GBLP108
Label: Glitterbeat
