BLK JKS
After Robots (Secretly Canadian)

It’s the weirdest thing, especially when you consider where rock ’n’ roll came from. Some 55-odd years ago, Ike Turner records “Rocket ’88” at Sun Studios. Although the future wife-beating cokehead’s composition is arguably more of a rhythm-and-blues number, it’s generally acknowledged as the first song to be labelled rock ’n’ roll.

Three years later, a Tupelo-trash towtruck driver named Elvis Presley waltzes into Sun Studios, lays down “That’s All Right (Mama)”, and finds himself an overnight phenomenon. Before you can say “cultural appropriation”, you’ve got a Caucasian man selling black music to conservative white America. He quickly gets stinking rich, the lesson being that there’s not only money to be made in rock ’n’ roll, but that the job comes with untold perks: pink Cadillacs, a lifetime’s supply of fried-peanut-and-banana sandwiches, and southern mansions where you can shoot out television sets in the privacy of your own fully pimped-out jungle rooms. A funny thing happens though. Rock ’n’ roll, which wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t been for black music, somehow becomes a white man’s game. Once you get past the Bad Brains, Living Colour, and the ’70s footnote known as Death, you’ll have more luck thinking of all-white soul groups than all-black rock bands.

For this reason—not to mention that they hail from the decidedly non–rock ’n’ roll hotbed of South Africa—the BLK JKS are an oddity. Formed in Johannesburg at the beginning of this decade, the four-piece caught the attention of M.I.A. producer Diplo a couple of years back, who encouraged them to tour North America. After a buzz-building set at SXSW in 2008, the hipster-approved Secretly Canadian label got on board, giving BLK JKS instant indie cred in the North American underground.

All this leads up to After Robots, the group’s weirdly fascinating, full-length North American debut.

Considering where BLK JKS come from, not just geographically but culturally, it’s no surprise that the album is more exotic-sounding than 99 percent of what washes over the transom here in North America.

Make no mistake about it, the group knows how to rock. Guitarist Lindani Buthelezi’s fretwork on “Lakeside” is dazzling enough to make Carlos Santana seem like one of the chicks from the Shaggs. As if that’s not impressive enough, the track also has endlessly inventive drummer Tshepang Ramoba working the kit like a polyrhythmic speed freak who’s getting paid by the beat.

But calling After Robots a rock record doesn’t do it justice. Working with Secret Machines Brandon Curtis, the group has produced nine genre-mashing soundscapes. “Standby” starts out as a Ben Harperesque soft rocker before morphing into something that approximates Peter Murphy playing free jazz in the shadow of the Blue Mosque. Even more out-there is “Kwa Nqingetje”, where an ethereal space-transmission opening gives way to dub-western guitar, Spiritualized horn blasts, and a prog-punk finish that shows up those two human hairballs from the Mars Volta.

BLK JKS aren’t ashamed of where they come from. The Afrobeat-tinted “Tselane” alone is enough to make you put South Africa on your list of places to see before you die. At the same time, they are determined to explore new frontiers. If the Talking Heads had grown up in Brooklyn circa-’99, rather than in CBGBs in the ’70s, they might have come up with something like “Banna Ba Modimo”.

The only thing that’s a drag about BLK JKS is that the odds of them inspiring anyone, regardless of colour, to start their own rock band is practically nil. The playing here is too crazily accomplished. Other than that, After Robots is a true gem. BLK JKS have just beaten white rockers everywhere at their own game.

Download This: “Banna Ba Modimo”