SKIP&DIE, are a genre-blending band formed by South African vocalist & visual artist Catarina Aimée Dahms (aka Cata.Pirata) and Dutch musician & producer Jori Collignon, have released their debut album on Crammed Discs. Riots in the Jungle was written as they travelled through Soweto, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Gugulethu, collaborating along the way with some of SA’s most talented young musicians.
The album is a response to that experience and just sounds different. Lots of great music coming out of SA, SKIP&DIE are as intriguing as any Die Antwoord or Freshly Ground. Riots in the Jungle is all over the place, songs in English, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, Spanish and Portuguese come together on tunes equally diverse. The undercurrent that keeps the whole thing together is the Tropical Bass vibe the pair ride throughout the album.
And that’s the thing I’m loving about this darkly beautiful flower that Tropical Bass has become, not a style per se, but one that open to any and everything. While often sounding super ethnic, it works in Western ears because the sensibility is wound around hip hop and electronic music; synthetic yet tribal and organic.
