The Durban rap group Sif Ous are smart, playful and funny. The immediate impulse is to file them under "joke rap" but this would be both inaccurate and unfair. Behind the bawdy lyrics and the scatological humour is a remarkable intelligence. It's clear that the trio have an excellent understanding of hip-hop tropes and while they subvert them, they do so in an affectionate way. Much like Das Racist one gets the impression that Sif Ous are, first and foremost, fans of rap music. Hopefully there are more music videos on the way. ~ Pravasan Pillay
More tracks on their MySpace page.
Interview at Mahala.
New Tearoom Books Titles
Gary Cummiskey's Don't Stop Until Incinerated is a short collection of poems that inhabit a desolate, disquieting place, a place in which the fabric of reality is threadbare. Cummiskey has mastered the art of minimalist unease, yet there are also moments of dark humour in these 26 starkly elegant poems, characterised by his iconoclastic surrealism.
New Tearoom Books Titles
30 Poems by Pravasan Pillay collects a selection of poems written mostly between 2003-2006 and published in South African journals. The themes of the poems are old, new and broken love; sex; marriage; failure; vanity; and quitting smoking.
Tearoom Books Titles
Loop is Tearoom Books' writing zine. It will be published primarily as free e-chapbooks. Issue 2 comprises a selection of poetry. Click on the cover for more information.
Tearoom Books Titles
Glumlazi by Pravasan Pillay, was released in January 2009. Glumlazi, Pillay's debut, is a collection of short poems, concerning revenge, sex and the blues. The majority of poems run no-more than two lines. Available at R40 including postage. For order information, contact tearoombooks@gmail.com
OTHER
(Book) Shaggy: 14 Rather Amusing Rambles by Anton Krueger and Pravasan Pillay. Second Print Run. Prepare yourself for a cast of some of the most manipulative, ingratiating, disillusioned, egotistical, inauthentic, spiteful narcissists operating in contemporary South Africa. Within these pages you will encounter fourteen first-hand shaggy stories told by a rogues gallery of scheming misanthropes whose speeches are full of sound and fury, signifying very little. These hilarious blowhards will make you snigger, cringe and wish your cousin had rather given you Spud 5 for your birthday. Published by BK Publishing. Price: R135. To order a copy write to: andrea [at] bkpublishing [dot] co [dot] za