Karyendasoul’s We Live 4 Our Music deftly marries elements of Afrohouse, tech and electronic music into a sonic tapestry crafting companions to moments of healing and soundtracking romantic club nights while rhythmically capturing the idyllic landscapes of his native Eastern Cape. Across 10 enthralling tracks the prolific producer and DJ enlists a range of vocalists to animate his eclectic soundscapes, with appearances by Simmy, Sai Hle, Miči, Jordan Arts and Grammy Award-winning Zakes Bantwini complimenting the romance-embracing “Umthandazo” alongside Ami Faku and dancefloor-geared “Juba” with Sykes while “Jacaranda”—in tandem with Msaki—serves as a poetic letter to a lover and the artists’ shared hometown eNqgamakhwe. Here, Karyendasoul (Bonga Ntozini) talks us through the themes, inspirations and sonics of his multilayered debut album. The Title & Artwork “The name of my record label is We Live 4 Our Music. I’ve been wanting to launch the label for a while now so this is a way of announcing that moving onwards this is where Karyendasoul’s music is going to be coming from. That’s the idea I had for the artwork, which we went inside a lake to shoot. I thought about the sky being clear and going into the water to cleanse myself and accept this new beginning. I’m starting a new journey and I was intentional with the sounds… intentional with the collaborations.” The Sounds “My thing was trying to show the listeners how diverse I am as a producer. I’m not just an Afrohouse or techno producer that can only make these dance sounds. I was trying to expose my musicality by combining a lot of different genres on one song but also in the whole project. A whole lot of different sounds come together to define who Karyendasoul is, so there’s a bit of soul, dance and club melodies. We’re trying to popularise this Afrohouse sound and find a way to bring the people of Africa closer with soulfulness, sing-alongs and making the songs relatable. I wanted to challenge myself and work with songwriters who do different genres but who I felt would be fitting for this sound.” The Collaborations “All the collaborations are my favourites ‘cause I worked with everyone I’m a fan of. I did “Waves Of Mercy” with Miči who’s Zimbabwe-born but based between London and Amsterdam. I think she’s such an amazing writer and vocalist, just like Sykes who I met in [KwaZulu-Natal]. With Jordan Arts we collaborated during lockdown after I bumped into one of his songs online and sent him a DM—this was even before I started working on the album. Zakes and I are always in sync in the studio, and I felt that with Simmy too. She’s a very soulful vocalist and I wanted to touch on that soulfulness but take her straight to Tomorrowland. “There was something that kept coming up after I released my last EP [2021’s Imizamo]: most of the vocals were in Zulu, so people thought I was from Durban. Same thing happened when I was in Jozi and people thought I was from Limpopo, because all the good house sounds were coming from Polokwane producers! So I also wanted to go with who I feel are the biggest songwriters from the Eastern Cape, Ami Faku and Msaki, to embrace isiXhosa in my sound.” The Process “I grew up in an era where albums were 10 or 12 songs at most. People at home would play the album from track 1 to 10 and the songs never made sense if you skipped because of how they were mixed. It used to be like a whole journey on one CD, and that’s what I wanted to create with how these songs are compiled. The crazy part is I don’t listen to a lot of dance music before I create. I’ll listen to electronica and R&B just to be in a creative space. Most of the time I start with drums but there’s some songs like ‘Jacaranda’ where I started with the chord progression and it built up to everything else. The drums lead me to where I’m gonna go, whether it's mellow or more of a club vibe. In terms of my approach, the vocals and the soulful [elements] are from my choral background and the days in the Eastern Cape.” The Essence Of Home “Church is something that’s a big part of my identity as a producer without me even realising it. There’s always singing at every gathering and we use music to escape in the village ‘cause there’s not so much happening. Back at home there was always a big crowd of people singing together and it’s a [choral] vibe. You’ll see that there’s a lot of that in my songs now, where it’s one person singing but there’s a lot of vocals stacked together. That takes you to a different dimension I can’t even explain. These songs were recorded in Durban and Joburg but I was travelling a lot, so the beats were made there and between my travels to Europe and Asia. The sound is well received over there but it doesn’t make sense to travel and feel like home is for holidays, so having the drums, something soulful and something electronic in the sound is intentional. As Africans the drum rhythm is something we have in our souls, but I grew up listening to electronic music and that’s part of my identity, so combining these things is what defines me.” The Spiritual “I started as a DJ and just found myself making music—going into production isn’t something I planned. I even thought the production software I was using was for DJing until a friend told me it's for making music! I think music itself is very spiritual, and whenever I wanted to be in my zone I’d go to it. It’s never intentional that I want a song to go a certain direction but it happens and I think that’s the spiritual part of it… the heavens know what they’re doing! I feel like a preacher that's been sent to preach a certain gospel. The church is a gathering and when you get to the dancefloor, it’s also a gathering where we’re preaching music.”