The Year of Too Much
published on the 6th of february 2026
in 2025, I found most of the music I listened to on Instagram. hearing hundreds of the tiny soundtracks to people’s days, half-meaningful moments and deep-timeline meme finds, either through quick-captured and edited Reels or Story posts; or countless videos from artists, labels, “news” outlets, influencers, writers, critics and anyone else with a phone and a mini-microphone on hand. it excited me at first - having everyone had their own lowdown on why you should listen to them, or an artist they loved. it excited me for the first few weeks of the year - being able to
- all well-versed in algo-speak and attention-maxing.
was almost like hearing a radio DJ throwing forward to the songs coming up in the next hour of their programme. only this time
there were also the promo posts of artists miming their choruses in multiple outfits and apartment backdrops for content. This year, everything was online. Unwillingly bound to the dangerous tides of a sea of information and mis-information, art and commerce, freedom and expression. this was the year of too much. Excess. Commercial logic became the norm. Virality became the only way in.
But bubbling unearth the onslaught of attention-maxing clips was a sense of paranostalgia for a place - a pre-COVID Internet perhaps, that felt more like a home (or a fucked-up, love-filled commune of varsity students).
of course, the barrage of treacherous images - between multiple streams of genocides unfolding before us, state-sanctioned violence, and faux self-help videos to cope with it all - adds to this mess, this tension-filled year. But what did our music say about it all? to be honest, i came in looking for something to show us how bad things really are, or how good it can be. something drastic, or totally withdrawn as the final sign of defeat. something.
On one side, there was plenty attention-maxed, fungible, log-drummed-out music built and optimised for algorithmic success. On the other side, there were people who could clearly see how their practices have become devalued in the wake of everything today. Everything was everywhere, all at once. Some worked with it and others pushed against it without even knowing.
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Dead Symbol’s Ubuhke bub’ hlungu
this album gets straight into the thick of things. what stick out first are the slow, mountainous drum machine workouts - which you realise are bent to the will of Rowan Smith & Fernando Damon - through slight tweaks and gestures on the delay pedals and effects processing units at their hands. layered above them are these discordant, cavernous synths that resemble the valleys on the cover of Autechre’s ‘Amber’.
Only that these valleys are shifting, changing in real time. The time has come for things to change - it seems. Sharp peaks emerge from the ground, charged with the fire of the dreams, images of piling corpse and a sort-of groundlessness that could only come from the vocals - laid-out as manifesto, as witness report to the state - lifting it out from the darkness that engulfs the thoughts of this critical sound collective.
channeling the ghosts of Sylvia Wynter and Artetha, Biko and Baraka, Coltrane, Fanon, Ginsberg. I kept thinking of Authechre’s ‘Amber’ album cover - adorned with mountains tops dressed in ice caps. like warrick sony x lesego rampolokeng filtered thru the blundered beats of early Warp filter.
‘Like wynter wanting to sound like Aretha’
Likky Liks - CHOMI (Remixes)
picking up the few crumbs she left behind after her breakout single, CHOMI, in late 2024 - LikkyLiks follows on a year later with the tried-and-tested remix EP formula, calling on a healthy dose of household and rising figures in the gqom-jersey club-techno continuum fueling Jozi’s queer nightlife since the pandemic.
the more risk-averse dancers have three weighty, gqom treatments to keep their Chomi SZN going, served by some familiar, cream-of-the-crop names in the scene today. With Surreal Sessions, SpacePose & Amaghost Obusted each strutting their best game, they didn’t flinch at the call-up for remix duties - each showcasing the new(ish) strains of the now decade-old sound. slipping either into the moody terrains of Step Down, or the skippy drums and gliding basslines that give uThayela that crazy bounce. At their best, their unique styles are in full-view on these remixes but show only a hint of deviation into something new. A bit of a missed opportunity to fuck around a bit.
the standout edits - which, without a doubt, come from OkayHlengi and SpacePose - seem to be taking that risk more head-on. Along with more conventionally-attractive, high-speed club workouts served by LUCAS3000 and LES.
that aforementioned gqom-jersey club-techno continuum - if there is room for such a thing on today’s dancefloors - seems to be equally propelled and collapsed into exciting new directions.
Hlengi finally collapses the continuum into something else, something more - a thing that gqom has probably been needing.
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