Photograph: © Adriaan Louw

With the colours of the Bo-Kaap in our periphery, one small seed caught up with local electronic DJ – Tommy Gun – to talk about indie-electro music, the Cape Town music scene, and what inspired his unique rock-influenced electro style. We also had the chance to see the man at work at Trinity night club where he moved the crowd to his funky, vocal electro beats mixed with some heavy bass-lines.
 

 
After kicking off the day with a drink at the Wale Rose Lifestyle restaurant, we moved on to snoop through LPs at the local music store Mabu Vinyl in Kloof Street and drive around the city in Tommy’s 1970 Green Rocket. For Thomas de Moyencourt it’s about fun and catchy nu-disco beats mixed with dancey bass-lines; it’s about him being able to do what he loves.

 
Tommy Gun – November 2011 by Tommy.Gun

Photograph: © James Seigel

Tommy Gun – Fun In The Sun by Tommy.Gun
 
Tommy Gun’s beats could be described as Leftfield Indie, Nu-Disco and Electro: non-commercial, yet accessible… Check out his SoundCloud page. A regular at Cape Town’s best live-music venues The Assembly and Trinity, he spent 2011 playing around the country at festivals such as Oppikoppi, Rocking the Daisies and Synergy Live. Thomas has also shared the stage alongside top international artists such as Deadmau5, Datarock and Designer Drugs; as well as local artists like Desmond & The Tutus, Die Heuwels Fantasies, Jack Parrow and Gazelle.
 
Last words? Here’s something from the man himself:

I’m super amp’d about the April re-opening of a freshly-renovated Fiction and the revival of the weekly Untamed Youth parties.

We have to agree, Tuesdays haven’t been the same since. Stay up to date with Untamed Youth new HERE.

images: Adriaan Louw, Jamies Siegel

I heard about the Pan African Space Station from the guy working in Cape Town’s raddest little record store,

On the one hand, Pan African Space Station (PASS) is primarily a streaming radio station that features some amazing jazz as well as stuff like ‘afro-futurist punk opera’ – and from that to hip-hop, electro-soul, kwaito, etc. On the other hand, it’s a series of events, as – awesomely – they record their tunes live from Cape Town over a month-long period each year.

On their website PASS describes itself as ‘a 30-day music intervention from September 12 to October 12, 2010, on the internet, as well as live in venues across greater Cape Town’. The streaming radio part took place in Long Street’s New Space Theatre, as well as other locations like Woodstock’s Albert Hall and the city centre’s St George’s Cathedral. Included in the lineup’s motley crew are names like the South African Thandiswa Mazwai (top left; ex-lead vox and songwriter for Bongo Maffin, and credited as one of the founding members of the Kwaito music scene), West African Brice Wassy (‘King of 6/8 Rhythm’), and American Georgia Anne Muldrow, notable for her impact on the West Coast hip hop scene.

Presented by the Africa Centre (also responsible for Infecting the City, the Spier Contemporary and the Badilisha Poetry X-Change), 2010 saw PASS’s third incarnation. Curated by music masters and cultural adventurers Ntone Edjabe and Neo Muyanga (collectively known as the Heliocentrics), the Pan African Space Station brings fresh talents from the African continent and abroad.

Make sure you click through to their website for some seriously sexy audio delights. This year, the Cape Town Pan African Space Station will be mirrored by a live PASS radio-cast from Limbe, Cameroon. During the month-long PASS journey, fans will be able to listen to live feeds from Cape Town and Limbe via the website 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can also find PASS on Facebook right here.

Words: Sarah Jayne Fell

Originally written September 2010 for onesmallseed.net. Edited March 2011 for onesmallseed.com.