BLK JKS Full-Length Debut

BLK JKS FULL-LENGTH DEBUT AFTER ROBOTS TO BE RELEASED SEPTEMBER 8

BLK JKS

BLK JKS‘ highly anticipated full-length debut After Robots will be released September 8 on Secretly Canadian. Following the March release of their MYSTERY EP and return appearance at South by Southwest, South Africa’s BLK JKS are receiving critical praise from The New York Times, SPIN, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, LA Weekly and more.

Amidst all this critical praise the essence of BLK JKS’ music — a collision of township blues, fringe jazz and renegade dub, heard via the lens of prog — shines through. Music from Africa has never quite sounded like this, as BLK JKS bring the concept of Afro-futurism into a new century.

After Robots was recorded January in Bloomington, IN as BLK JKS traded a South African summer for winter in America and burrowed in for marathon recording sessions of one live take after the next. Brandon Curtis of The Secret Machines returned to join the band at the controls and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble appears on several tracks with the swagger of aggressive horn stabs, but throughout After Robots is an original BLK JKS affair — a distinctly South African vision of rock’s global travel and the possibility of what it can sound like from here on out.

BLK JKS consists of childhood friends Lindani Buthelezi and Mpumi Mcata who grew up on the same block in Johannesburg’s East Rand where they taught themselves guitar. After the band’s current lineup took shape with the addition of bassist Molefi Makananise and drummer Tshepang Ramoba, both of Soweto, they embarked on a schedule of heavy touring throughout South Africa that earned them a loyal national following.

BLK JKS tour dates available here.