Members: Ian Holden (Sound Engineering, Producer), Louise Eksteen (Vocals)

Biography:

Johannesburg is known for its fast pace, deeply layered multi-racial musical scenes and a slightly foreboding feeling when cruising the city at night. This makes for a perfect setting for the electro based outfit, Devil’s Cartel, to come from. Their sound is a mixture of cross-cultural and genre-twisting electro, probably best described as a fusion of dark trip-hop, sultry vocals and eclectic electronic sounds.

Comparing it to the city of Johannesburg might seem a strange thing to do at first, but once you’ve listened to their album, Disengage, you will get what where I’m coming from. Devil’s Cartel, as their name suggests, is something other than the norm. Their music is layered with strange and dark tweaks, blips and bleeps that flow from your speakers in a dark variation of breaks, 6/8 and 4/4 beats that become a synergy of colour. Dark Colours.

Devil’s Cartel is made up of mainly two musicians: Ian Holden and Louise Eksteen. They do make use of other musicians and do collaborations, but they are the two constants in this group.

Ian’s career in the music industry started in 1992 as a DJ spinning deep house which triggered his first interests in music. He soon left DJing for good and started toying with computers and production. After successfully selling a track to a large corporation, he was able to study and fulfil his dream. While studying he started toying with the ideas of starting his own production company and after obtaining his formal qualification, Filtered Hues was born. Filtered Hues was mainly a fusion of Breaks, Trip Hop and Tech-House with one track landing on the SA based Tribal -Tech label, Afroboogie. His experience with Filtered Hues could most likely be billed as the foundations for Devil’s Cartel

At the moment Ian is working at Foghound Studios in Midrand, South Africa, as a full time Sound Engineer which is in my opinion one of the things that sets him apart from other electro producers in South Africa. His productions are always crisp, and clear with a sense of heaviness and forboding. You often find that electro comes across as being too loaded with sounds and you can easily lose the quality of some or most of the song when this is done. Ian’s mastering skills are becoming legendary in music circles in SA for this exact reason. He can still overload a song with so many sounds that it makes your ears tingle, but none of them lose that quality or sense of purpose.

The other half of Devils Cartel, Louise Eksteen has worked on numerous production based projects since her early teens. These endeavours would include work alongside the electronic group Strange, dance-label Afroboogie, producer Simon Fine and AKA Lightsleeper (with whom she made her live debut at the Flux festival in 2003). She was also involved with Dark Templar, an electro-Goth band and Merchandize, an acid-jazz group. Louise performed numerous gigs in Pretoria and Johannesburg with the two aforementioned bands in 2003/4. In 2005 and early 2006 she performed all over London with Liquor Store, an Electronic rock duo, whilst recording the last few tracks for Devils Cartels Disengage.

Stef picked up his first bass in 1996 and since then he’s played in a few underground SA rock bands, including Never Machine Forever and Even Flow. He’s played countless of live gigs (including Oppikoppi, Woodstock, Splashy Fen) and has laid down bass lines for the Even Flow full length album, one track off the Mode of Obscurity album (an SA tribute to Depeche Mode) and, of course, future releases for Devil’s Cartel. After leaving school, Stef studied for close to 2 years in sound engineering with the idea of one day being a producer. He met Ian at the end of 2004 which rekindled Stef’s flame for production. He’s currently on bass duty for the alternative rock act, Myepic, and working with Ian in the studio whenever he has the opportunity.

Devil’s Cartel has also done work with Christine Roberts who is probably more renowned for being part of the eccentric Afrikaans group Radio Kalahari Orkes, although she is an accomplished folk singer in her own right. Christine’s voice owes something to Portishead and Cowboy Junkies. It also owes something to the fact that she was raised in a musical household and has been involved in various ensemble projects for the last 11 years. Whilst completing an Honours Degree in Fine Arts, Christine also took lessons in classical jazz voice training at the University of Cape Town. Christine is featured on a few of the darker cover Devil’s Cartel has done, namely a cover of NIN, Hurt and Beck’s, Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometimes.

Victoria Landey left SA at 17 to pursue music in London. She played bass in an all-girl’s group, sang lead for a country & western band, and eventually went the solo singer/songwriter route, playing various underground folk venues in London. After 6 years, she came home to open mic nights at the radium beer hall for the last year and lead singer of local JHB based alt/rock band ‘Left Hand Drive’ and more recently a folk band called Lusk.

In an interview with Taryn-Lee Beggar, on Music Inustry Online (www.mio.co.za) Ian said the following about DC and their place in SA:

“DC has hopes of bridging the gap between genres – especially electronic, which has not been represented as well as it should be in this country”. Ian attributes this weakness mainly to a lack of understanding of the genre, but insists “that at the end of the day, its not about what genre you should or shouldn’t be listening to – its about good music and I hope that the Devil’s Cartel fans can appreciate that.”

So, in a country where it seems that electronically produced music is finally getting a voice and that the listeners are starting to see the difference in the sub-genres, one could hail Devil’s Cartel as one of the trend setters and spotlight groups who have helped to give its music a bigger crowd to play to.

Review written by Chris Rootman