/ 19 March 2009

Death disco

A place where poetry and theatre meets noise. That was the original vision for South Africa’s long-lost post-punk band KOOS, formed in 1986 by conceptual artist Neil Goedhals and actor Marcel van Heerden.

They were joined in their quest by actors Gys de Villiers and Megan Kruskal, drummer Velile Nxazonke and artist Kendell Geers in what their musical director Goedhals described as ”net a klomp geraas” (just a lot of noise).

But their impact and influence was huge and 20 years after the release of their only recording, known as The Black Tape, KOOS are back, remastered and reissued.

Between 1986 and 1990 KOOS were a vital cog in the local music scene, astounding audiences with their aggressive take on the chaos and despair that engulfed South Africa in the mid-Eighties.

They created the soundtrack to the ”state of emergency” period when detentions, burning townships and senseless murder defined South Africa. ”It was a time of major political upheaval, there was revolution in the air,” says vocalist Van Heerden.

”Most of us were from Afrikaans backgrounds and it made sense that we should speak to the oppressive Afrikaner status quo in their own language. I found inspiration and a lot of what I wanted to say in the socially alienated and sometimes schizophrenic poetry of Johan van Wyk,” says Van Heerden.

”Works by other poets as well as our own lyrics were added. We were involved in the Voëlvry initiative and although we were all against the system, our sensibilities were different to the people who made a career out it. We were a mix of theatre, noise and poetry.”

The sound bore similarities to the angular punk of Gang of Four and The Fall, the motorik rhythms of Can and the theatrics of the Birthday Party and Bauhaus. Their slab of dread-drenched performance theatre has influenced many generations of outsider artists from Battery 9’s Paul Riekert to noise terrorist Righard Kapp.

”I remember this blistering band I saw in Berea in the late-Eighties that just blew me away,” says Battery 9 frontman Riekert.

”They sounded like nothing else and they were pushing musical boundaries, not just making a political fuss like many ‘artists’ of that time. It’s always irked me that there were no good recordings available of this excellent band; it was as if they never existed,” says Riekert.

”I really wanted my own copy. So why not make it available? We had a record company, a studio to master the stuff and hands!”

So Riekert’s One F record label and the Warren Siebrits Gallery have collaborated to reissue KOOS’s The Black Tape, which the band sold at gigs in a brown paper bag 20 years ago.

The recordings have been remastered with a number of rare KOOS recordings in new packaging designed by Kapp, whose CD covers — for his now defunct record label One Minute Trolley Dash — drew attention.

”Righard is a musician and designer extraordinaire,” says Van Heerden. ”His handmade CD covers are works of art and labours of love.

”I think KOOS are a fantastic example of an aesthetically literate, sonically challenging and generally critically conscious band, who conveyed an urgency and chaos that no one else has,” says Kapp.

”Most of South Africa’s ‘protest music’ is from a very formal perspective and is pretty tame. KOOS interest me because they actually sound like what they’re about.”

Van Heerden says the reissue will bring closure for him. ”It seemed clear from the beginning that KOOS would only exist in a certain time frame. We never tried to be a commercial success, but we definitely wanted to leave some sort of record.”

And they did. The Black Tape in the brown paper bag, which accentuated its illicit content, is now available on CD.

The launch of the KOOS reissue takes place at the Warren Siebrits Gallery (140 Jan Smuts Avenue, Rosebank) on Wednesday March 18 from 6pm. There will be 500 copies of the CD on sale