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Witch

Kuomboka

Sharp Flat

Sourced from the analog master tapes for the first time, Sharp-Flat presents the WITCH disco albums as you've never heard them before in sleeves that replicate the original album artwork.

Over the course of the 1970s, WITCH delivered an impressive run of garage, rock and prog releases. By 1980, the band was ready to embrace the exciting dance sounds of a new era. Shuffling their lineup and relocating to Zimbabwe, they undertook their mythical transformation into an African R&B, soul and funk powerhouse. With access to a state of the art recording studio in Harare, WITCH produced two exquisite recordings during their disco years.

A full-throttle boogie outing, Kuomboka was issued in 1984 and features rising star Patrick Chisembele stepping in on lead vocals. Despite the album's modern vision for African pop, its title refers to a traditional migration ceremony practiced by the Lozi people of the Zambezi floodplains. The album documents a seasoned ensemble with an ambitious vision and is considered the group's sonic masterpiece.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Erotic Delight
A2. I Can Do Without You
A3. Believer Ma Lover
A4. Kuomboka
B1. Come Together
B2. More Sweat Than Sweet
B3. I Wanna See The Light
B4. Jah Let The Sun Shine

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Rockart

House

Sharp Flat

Mystical, minimal house offering hailing from South Africa in the mid-2000s courtesy of Cape Town indie labels Sharp-Flat and Roastin' Records.

RockArt was a hybrid-electro performance art project that emerged during a golden age for electronic music in the Cape, the post-Y2K scene spurred by the maverick African Dope record label that marked the rise of cult outsiders Felix Laband and Tudor Watkins Jones. Harnessing the combined powers of seasoned jazz musicians Hilton Schilder and Alex van Heerden, RockArt cooked up a signature futurist formula laced with musical bows and voice samples that was unmistakably indigenous. Intended as a companion to the group's "Future Cape" album of 2006, "House" was conceived as a long-form soundscape of tribal electronica that could stand alone on its own merits but also provide a backdrop for live instrumental improvisation. The project was shelved following the untimely death of Alex van Heerden in 2009 but emerges from Hilton Schilder's archive as a reminder of the duo's profound collaborative alchemy.

Running at 28 minutes over two sides of 12-inch maxi cut at 45RPM, "House" is available as a boutique vinyl offering with a psychedelic art sleeve pressed in a first edition of 300 copies.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: Hugely overlooked and sounding as fresh as it did at the turn of the millennium. Sounds like those tracks you'd fetishize over off Kompakt, Perlon or Plus 8 mixtapes. Love it.

TRACK LISTING

House I
House II

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Movement In The City

Sharp Flat

In the wake of the 2020 edition of Movement in the City's second album "Black Teardrops" (1981), Sharp-Flat Records returns with a prequel by way of a reissue of the band's self-titled debut from 1979.

As the 1970s were drawing to a close, the epic Black Disco studio project with its signature pairing of drum machine and organ had run it course. After delivering a killer trilogy of cosmic lounge outings dating back to 1975, the group yearned for funkier grooves and the core trio of composer Pops Mohamed on organ with Basil Coetzee on tenor sax and Sipho Gumede on bass decided to hire a drummer and rebrand as Movement in the City. In contrast with the New Age detachment of Black Disco, Movement in the City was conceptually grounded in the bleak social realism depicted on its photographic album covers and leaned into the vivid sensibilities of library music from the era. Blending Cape jazz with funk and soul, the group's output evokes a soundtrack for South African city life at the outset of the 1980s while nodding allegorically to the subterranean movements that were in the course of shaking the cage for political change.

With its cast of jazz fusion all-stars, "Movement in the City" is the manifesto of a band in transition - a bold and slick first offering that delivers a modern South African sound capable of both the funky exuberances of "Mister Lucky" as well as the down-home pathos of "Blue Sunday." Restored from its original tape masters and released in partnership with As-Shams Archive and Pops Mohamed, this rare artefact of South African jazz history is back in print for the very first time since its original 1979 release.