Photo courtesy of the artist.
Over the last few years, Italian DJ and producer Nan Kolè has played an instrumental role in exposing the world to the ecstatic genre known as gqom. With his label, Gqom Oh!, he's released music from a tight-knit group of producers based in Durban, South Africa who make fleet-footed and foreboding refractions of global club music. If you've copped any of the compilations or heard any of this at your local boundary-pushing club night, you have Kolè to thank, in part.Kolè's set to release an EP of his own on Black Acre on April 14, and he wanted to use the opportunity to give even more shine to the scene. "Malumz," one of the tracks on the EP, came about as a tribute to the sound and style. Dark and brooding, while bubbling with idiosyncratic sounds, its a wild track in his own right—but to hear him tell it, it's not authentic gqom exactly."One night I tried to make a Gqom track a few months back and after I had made it, I decided to share it on the Gqom Oh! Whatsapp group to get a bit of feedback from the guys," he wrote in an email. " [Durban producer] Citizen Boy then messaged me and was super hyped and was like 'Malumz, this track is so good and the sounds are amazing, I love the clarity of the sounds and that kind of melodies'. He then mentioned that it wasn't actually a Gqom track and that he wanted to show me how to make a Gqom track properly, so I told him that I would [have] been honored for him to make a Gqom remix of 'Malumz.'"And so he did. Citizen Boy's version ups both the playfulness and the fear at the heart of Kolè's track—adding a gasping vocal sample and horror-movie synth line to the original's heady swirl. Stuttering snares slowly crawl into the track as staticky scrapes fill the margins, adding a bit of weight to proceedings. Like any good gqom track, its a feat of tricky drum programming, made all the more head-spinning by the gloomy sonics that surround it.You can hear Citizen Boy's remix below in advance of the EP's release tomorrow, April 14.
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