At first glance, Die Antwoord do not appear to be anything someone can identify as an entity that inhabits this planet Earth. Or, for that matter, the solar system said planet resides within.
There is the striking image that one is met with when arriving at the home page of their website. A single image of tiny, waif-like frontwoman Yo-Landi Visser, sitting in a throne, wearing nothing more than two fur pelts. Standing next to her, an unidentifiable figure with pointy fingernails, in a monk’s robe which features a hand drawing of what appears to be a cartoon-like mouse head – one that could be Mickey’s discarded, distant cousin – inside of a white appliqué on the chest of it. We don’t know who this individual is, as he – or she – is wearing a matching pointy-eared sack mask over his (or her) head. There are no other apparent areas of their site. No bio. No free tracks. No twitter feed. No tour photos. Only a countdown clock in the bottom left-hand corner, and a parental advisory icon that turns out to be a link sending the visitor to a mini documentary-like video about the band.
They could be from anywhere. Norway. Sweden. Bristol. Western expatriates living in Tokyo with parents working in an embassy. Eastern Block expatriates transplanted to Atlanta. They might be living next door to Alex, the Russian b-boy interpreter who worked for Heritage Odessa Tours in the film Everything Is Illuminated (portrayed in the film by Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello – QRO live review). Survivors of a plane crash in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, raised by some tribe indigenous to the region. One simply does now know.
Further, it is difficult to ascertain what it is they actually do to those who have first seen and not yet heard. Post-dance punks? Quirky Icelandic indie pop? A live PA crew doing some strange diva-driven flavor of house music?
As it turns out, they are none of these things. They call none of these places home, and claim none of these origins. Members Watkin Tudor Jones (a.k.a. ‘Ninja’), Visser, and the DJ we only know by the alias Hi-Tek do their own highly unique brand of grimey, sputtery, bouncey, brag-laden hip-hop. They hail from South Africa, the land of apartheid, professional Surfer Shaun Tomson, a Guinness Book of World Records attempt at the most surfers standing on one wave, and Charlize Theron. They call the city of Cape Town home, and like Theron, they are of Afrikaner descent, relatives to Dutch Calvinists dropped off at the tip of the continent of Africa to setup a lemonade stand for folks traveling between Europe and India, Thailand, Australia and other stops in the Indian Ocean.
Ninja and Visser’s rap delivery blithely slurs between their native tongue of Afrikaans and English, sometimes in a single breath. On “Fish Paste”, Visser – in a voice that is at once the stepchild of Amil and Björk – sings the nursery rhyme refrain, “Jou ma se poes in ‘n fishpaste jar / Moenie kom kak praat / Nie my blaar” (which translates to something along the lines of “Your mother’s cat in a fishpaste jar / Do not talk shit / We do not blister)”. From there, Ninja takes over, rhyming his challenge to emcee crown, telling us, “You should have known better than to fuck with a ninja with an attitude” in his heavy Afrikaner accent, over Dirty Southern 808 beats and a grime-y moog bass line.
With “Wat Kyk Jy?”, and its alternately bombastic and subdued synth stabs and hyper four-on-the-floor house rhythm, Die Antwoord has made a clever nod to the Gabber/Rotterdam techno pioneered by their Dutch brethren in way that manages to sound fresh and new. The call/response chorus – sung entirely in Afrikaans – makes the familiar house hooks and implements sound disorienting and exotic. From there, “I Don’t Need You” slinks along over a vocoder’ed chorus vocal and a hook that evokes early ‘90s trance.
No track on the EP better declares the Die Antwoord manifesto and sonic platform better than the lead track and apparent first single of this five-song effort than “Enter The Ninja”. Visser opens with an ethereal sounding plea to Ninja “I need your protection / Be my Samarai”, over a bed of dense, lush synthesized strings and chippy arpeggios that could have been programmed by Moby (QRO live review), while later on, Ninja advises us that he is “Hardcore / Been cut so deep feel no pain / It’s not sore / Don’t ask for kak or you’ll get what you ask for”. He also wants us to know that this is “Like, the coolest song I have ever heard in my whole life”, as if to encourage the listener to concur.
All in all, a tremendous first effort by a band that literally came from nowhere and shows great promise. Here’s to hoping Jay-Z never gets his hands on them, and delivers to them the same fate suffered by Lady Sovereign (QRO album review).
-Dee Madden
