BLK JKS, After Robots
Featured Album
Globe-tripping genre fusionists rewrite continental borders on ingenious debut
Despite the recent slew of cheeky American Afro-pop bands attempting to convince you otherwise, African music and indie rock don't make for the most natural of bedfellows. That angle seems to account for roughly half the hype behind Johannesburg art rock up-and-comers BLK JKS. On their debut full-length, BLK JKS come off like globe-tripping genre fusionists, rewriting continental borders and crafting one of the year’s most ingenious albums in the process.
If After Robots were a world tour — and sometimes, it seems to be — there are few continents that BLK JKS don't swing through. They skew Afropop on "Molalatladi," with relentless tribal chanting and dissenting polyrhythms; their rock instrumentation, moody vocals and ungodly guitar solos evidence an education in American prog. A Middle Eastern motif adorns "Banna Ba Modimo," while shades of reggae and ska can be heard in the strangely sunny "Skeleton." And the occasional use of brass, piano and acoustic guitar — as on the mournful "Standby" — suggest a bit of Delta blues. The atmospheric "Lakeside" is dramatic and richly informed, sewn up with a darkly murmured guitar line. Aching and immediate, pan-national and disorienting, After Robots may just be the future of prog as we know it.
