Illustrative image: KASA (Photo: Sage Erasmus) | Garth Erasmus (still from footage by Sage Erasmus) | heat_deth (Photo: Sage Erasmus) 
It is somewhat reassuring that some things don’t really change. Somewhere close to two decades ago I had a small hand in On the Edge of Wrong, a tiny music festival for improvisation which, against all odds, continued in spirit even as people came and went and funders bailed, eventually morphing into sensa.org.za, which has continued to put events on despite a public largely indifferent to a music event that can’t easily be accessorised in some convenient way. One such event was the recent Drone Day 2025 at Muizenberg Kitchen.
The organiser, Sage Botanicas, laments that the parlance of our times has resulted in a “Drone Day” attracting more attention from unmanned aircraft enthusiasts than actual musical curiosity, and I can relate to their frustration.
Our preconceptions have become so deep seated that we seem offended by the suggestion that things could be seen in any other way. Some of us are debating whether Apple has lost the plot with glassmorphism 2.0, who cares if you are unsure of where this “Western civilisation” thing is taking us? If your conception of “music” is a pleasantly arranged sequence of notes, then the idea of a drone wouldn’t fit that description.
Yet, in so many ways, the drone has had a social function that predates the idea of pleasantly arranged notes.
As a self-professed cantankerous old fart, my extraocular muscles are by far the most ripped thing about me, thanks to a regime of vigorous eye-rolling whenever the yoga crowd talks about the healing power of vibration. But I’ve also told churchfolk that overdriven amp feedback is the only form of worship my personal theology requires.
I have issues, that’s for sure. Yet if anything can unite punk and hippie, it seems this is it. For some, it’s about chakras aligning, for others it’s about the indifference of an unimaginable universe. Or sticking it to the man. But everyone is here to listen to performers play one note for a very, very long time, in some shape or another.
We’re off to a bad start when the venue only sells kombucha and essence of sceletium, not a drop of booze or cough syrup in sight. The hippies have won! But we are bigger than our vices, aren’t we? I have to disclose at this point that I only actually caught three of the several performances on the night, my excuse being that I am middle aged, free time is in short supply, I was hangry and Tortuga Loca was just across the street. The full line-up also featured helo samo of the sludge doom trio P+A+G+E+S (F.K.A Morning Pages) performing as KASA,, multi-instrumentalist and producer Nicola Vlok and dark ambient protest artist Nonentia, among others.
Sold Ash Experiment’s performance is a poetic meditation on the expressive potential of the Fender Jaguar specifically — from gentle bowed fretboard runs and behind-the-bridge chimes to howling feedback and sonic collapse. The result is an unexpectedly delicate and unabashedly beautiful set from a guitarist too inquisitive and too averse to complacency to ever phone it in.
Sold Ash remain one of the most vital alt-rock bands working in South Africa today in terms of understanding the spirit of what motivated the stylings of rock music’s more lunatic fringe , and it’s thrilling to see their frontman carve out space for this kind of introspection.
STRAGE: DRONE certainly got the memo when it comes to sheer sonic onslaught. Flanked by two enormous cabs, his setup is a rackmount configuration that every gear geek in the venue cricks their neck to get a look at. Almost indifferently, his back turned to the audience, he starts playing notes. It barely matters which notes he plays, what matters is how mangled those notes sound and how loud it is. In the spirit of My Bloody Valentine and Sunn(((O))), this is a sonic presence that you feel, rattling your ribcage and toying with your perception. I can swear that I hear a different tonality when I plug my ears to the one I thought I was hearing.
When the set ends I announce “my soul has been sandblasted clean”, and it really does feel like it. “So THAT’S why they were selling earplugs at the door”, I overhear others say over the ringing. Tinnitus is no joke, kids, take care of your listening holes. This is drone as unbearable presence; modern-world malaise made exhilarating, like a scream into a wind tunnel.
I’m inclined to believe that the social value in these experimental music initiatives is the cross-genre explorations they facilitate, the sense that many languages can express the same thought. To see a fresh-faced alternative crowd receive a jazz veteran like Garth Erasmus with genuine enthusiasm is the point.
I recall an anecdote Garth (himself a First Nations descendent) told me about an opportunity he had to perform with his traditional instruments for the royal Dutch family who were visiting on some kind of “sorry for colonialism” tour: how it may have seemed like a quaint concession to an observer, but how in the moment the music became an accusation, a moment laden with the gravity of history and the weight of justice unattained. The sound is the fury.
Recognition
I’ve known Garth for decades and he isn’t doing it for recognition, that much is clear, but in a just world he would be on a banknote by now. He is joined by Asher Gamedze on drums and together they lay waste to the assumption that this kind of music is about synthesis, effects or tech. Using only breath and very dextrous hand movements, the duo launch into a sustained performance that qualifies as drone but is at the same time energetic, enervated and disquieting. The drumming Asher employs here is my favourite kind of drumming, a busy, stochastic flurry with enough attention to detail and lightness of touch that it resembles a natural phenomenon. Garth Erasmus, with nothing but a saxophone and circular breathing technique, holds a slowly evolving pattern of overtones and notes with determination and conviction, gradually and patiently evolving into an eventually furious squall.
The unique challenge that each of the performers on this night have brought upon themselves is how do they make a monotonous sound worth listening to? What warrants that interest? What aim does it achieve? Is it to comfort? Is it to unsettle? It is easy to ignore how intimidating a prospect that can be, and for that alone I applaud the dedication of each performer on the night.
I said earlier that things don’t change. But they do. In the years since I participated, music has become so ridiculously commodified that we get excited about the idea that AI can take that drudgery off our hands. In the intervening time Spotify became a thing and Instagram made playing guitar quickly a viable career option to the extent that there is such incentive to fake it that players now resort to
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Needless to say, I find it interesting how, as public funding has all but dried up and “the market has spoken” fatalists have shrugged their last shrug, these initiatives still somehow find purchase in motivated individuals who put in real sweat and tears to make out-of-the-ordinary things happen, and still make financial contributions voluntary. In 2025, the internet’s gilded promise of democratisation has started to ring more than a little bit hollow, and it has become clearer than ever that if you want something to stick around, you really ought to support it (gee, where have I heard that before?).
More than ever we need to ask ourselves what the purpose of music could be if it is to retain any human value, because the path we’ve been on since the first wax cylinder was forged has been barrelling toward a very humdrum logical conclusion.
I am relieved that Drone Day existed to pose that question. DM
Righard Kapp is a left-handed guitarist, liker of words, lapsed illustrator and Daily Maverick in-house designer by day. He has chauffeured the late great Zim Ngqawana and the punctually great Lawrence English. He recently did a thing with Garth Erasmus.