Source: Fred De Vries (Fred De Vries – 24 Mar 2009)

Hey hey hey, after a great launch party at Warren Siebrits’ gallery in Joburg it’s officially out: the KOOS retrospective, lavishly packaged (design by Righard Kapp) and released by One-F Music. It should be available from all good music shops.

The sleeve notes were written by yours truly, as was the press release, which you can read below. Enjoy the nostalgia…

KOOS RETROSPECTIVE CD

Finally it’s available again: the long lost album of the legendary South African band KOOS, which at the time, 1989, was only released as a limited edition black tape, packed in a brown paper bag. It became known as The Black Tape.

Forget about Johannes Kerkorrel and his Koos Kombuis, KOOS was the truly innovative band whose music defined and reflected South Africa’s increasingly dark eighties. The band was formed in 1986 by conceptual artist Neil Goedhals and actor Marcel Van Heerden, who were joined by Gys De Villiers, Megan Kruskal, Velile Nxazonke and Kendell Geers. The country’s original punk poet Johan van Wyk wrote some of the lyrics.

KOOS was a highly personal reaction to the chaos and despair that had engulfed the country in the mid-eighties. States of emergency, burning townships, murder, bomb attacks and people who ‘fell from the window’ of a police station or ‘slipped on a piece of soap’. That was the subject matter KOOS sang about in songs like Sing jy van Bomme, Tsafendas and the menacing Suid Afrikaanse Herfs, which referenced the German terrorists of the Rote Armee Faktion.

Musically they were miles ahead of the 12 bar blues and folk that had inspired their alternative Afrikaner contemporaries. Their sound was artful anti-rock, fuelled by the noises that had reached Johannesburg from Berlin, Sheffield, Melbourne and Cologne: the metallic motorik and madness of Einstürzende Neubauten, Cabaret Voltaire, Birthday Party and Can. But all done in a unique style that has aged surprisingly well, and would now probably be called post-punk. Van Heerden sang, spat and whispered. Sometimes he used pebbles to distort his voice, while Goedhals punished his guitar.

KOOS disbanded in 1990. They had lived through the states of emergency of 1985 and 1986, they had been attacked, their name had partly been appropriated by Andre Letoit who became Koos Kombuis. But they had survived, battered but unbowed. Then, in 1990, around the time of the release of Nelson Mandela, the group imploded. The country was going through monumental changes. Goedhals didn’t want to perform anymore. There was no big fight, no drama, together they decided to call it a day. The raison d’être was gone. The band had made its statement: that one black tape, wrapped in a brown paper bag to accentuate its illicit content – a nod to the way the American bum must drink his alcohol.

Later that same year, on the 16^th of August, on Elvis Presley’s dying-day, Goedhals jumped to his death from the sixth floor of a flat in Yeoville. A few days later came the news that the Johannesburg Art Gallery had bought some of his works. It sounded like a Goedhals prank.

The legend of Koos wouldn’t rest though. I wrote about them in my well received 80s underground book Club Risiko (Nijgh & Van Ditmar, 2006), where they share pages with international luminaries such as Sonic Youth, Laibach and Einstürzende Neubauten. Second, American underground label S-S Records intends to release some of Goedhals’s experimental pre-Koos recordings later this year.

But most important: here’s the re-mastered version of that legendary collector’s item that Shifty Records released twenty years ago.

KOOS 1986- 1990

personnel:

• Christo Boshoff – bass, sax and keyboard
• Gys de Villiers- bass and sax
• Neil Goedhals – guitar and synthesizer
• Megan Kruskal- vocals
• Velile Nxazonke- drums and percussion
• Marcel van Heerden- vocals
• Kendell Geers- keyboard on Cowboy, tape loops on Wil ons Oorlewe and Tsafendas

All music by KOOS

1. Sing jy van Bomme – Ryk Hattingh uit sy toneelstuk dieselfde titel
2. Ek is my Dilemma – Johan van Wyk
3. In detention – Christopher van Wyk
4. Is jy ʼn Moegoe? – Marcel van Heerden
5. Zebra in Paris – Megan Kruskal
6. Sloper – Johan van Wyk
7. Delilah – Les Reed and Barry MasonPublished by Hal Leonard
8. Breed like Rats – from the play Oudisie om die Einde van die Aarde te Verhoed by Johan van Wyk
9. Wil ons Oorlewe – na die gedig Hieronymus Bosch se Koringwa deur Johan van Wyk
10. Tsafendas – Marcel van Heerden
11. ʼn Bietjie Dom – Johan van Wyk
12. Cowboy – Nikos Konstandaras en Tertius Meintjes na die gedig Cowboy Jan deur Johan van Wyk
13. Karel & Jansie – Margaret Roestdorf
14. Vlêrmuis – Johan van Wyk
15. Suid Afrikaanse Herfs – Marcel van Heerden

Bonus tracks:

16. Honderd-en-een persent Bang – Johan van Wyk after a performance by The Plastic People of the Universe
17. Too Heavy to Rise – Marcel van Heerden

Source: Christo Doherty (flickr)

One of the great Afrikaans actors of his generation, Marcel van Heerden, explains the background to the formation of his noise-protest group, Koos, during the darkest days of Apartheid in South Africa. The occasion was the launch of a new CD compilation of recordings made by the group in the late 1980s, but previously unobtainable. The CD was produced by Warren Siebrits using oirginal recordings done by Shifty Studios. The launch took place at the Warren Siebrits Gallery, Parkwood, Johannesburg, 18 March 2009.
Shot under most unpromising lighting conditions: gallery strip lights in the roof directly above. No side lighting. Nikon D700 with 28-70mm lens, f2.8 at ISO1600.

See all the photos on flickr