Swing City

Well Swung

Teleport to a golden era. YOU might have watched The Great Gatsby or Boardwalk Empire. If so, you probably have a sense of what Swing City sounds like.

The band, made up of Loyiso Bala, Graeme Watkins and Nathan Ro, creates a rare sound that takes us back to a simpler time.

While the three singers all have successful individual careers, they found an escape in swing music, and if you allow them to, they will take you to when the US during the Depression when alcohol was prohibited.

Music was an escape and the sound on Well Swung is the sort of sound you might have heard back then. It has the coolness of Casablanca, yet it is dance-along music that will, at the very least, have you clapping along as if you are at a Sophiatown party.

What Bala, Watkins and Ro cash in on is the surprise factor. No-one saw this coming and in our hip hop era, this is a refreshing project.

Expect features from Lloyd Cele and Mariechan. – Munya Vomo AS FAR as new bands go, Zuko Collective is right up there with the best of them. Watching them perform is a trip in itself. And for their new album, Relationtrips, they take the listener on a journey that meanders passed romantic love, faith, identity and motherly love.

But their awe-inspiring magic on stage is lost in transit on this disc. Possibly the only flaw on this album, it often sounds as though the vocals were not prized above the instruments, thus drowning them. I don’t know if this is a recording or mixing and mastering issue but on a quirky track like Skuif, featuring the eccentric Stilo Magolide, the listener actually wants to hear the nuances in what’s being said. But the drums are too loud.

Made up of Sibusiso Chiloane (bass), Kenridge Rambau (rhythm guitar), Zweli Mthembu (lead guitar), Joshua Maluleka (drums and support vocals), Thandi Khoza (support vocals), Teboho Smith (saxophone) and Nozuko Mapoma (lead vocals), Zuko Collective are a group in every sense of the word.

And perhaps the album sounds the way it does in an effort to allow everyone to shine equally and not sound like mere accompaniment to vocals that are complemented by Khoza’s powerful restraint.

But other than the actual sound,

Wind Magic Relationtrips is a good album. Liwa, a song Mapoma wrote for and about her son, is beautiful. As is Letter To My Brother.

I am especially in like with Spaza, which admonishes men who feel the right to a woman’s body – whether through stares or touching or otherwise – by virtue of them being men. Mapoma is quick to shut that down. Other features include Reason (on a playful song about a boy who kisses a little too “freaky”) and Mastermind. – Helen Herimbi