The Mix 084: State OFFF

For State OFFF, gqom is less of an underground genre, but more an encapsulation of the underground. After years of being the go-to for off-the-wall edits for club selectors wanting to blur the lines between dancefloor familiarity and new-fangled sounds, the Zimbabwean-born producer has now set his flag into the ground for a new vein of underground interconnectivity on his debut album 'Hard Currency'.  

Released last month via London-based Relentless Label Services, 'Hard Currency' is named after the two key concepts behind the record. Firstly, it's brimming with "hard music", or as State OFFF puts it, "music with hard log drums, a tight bassline, etc. All the things we were creating had this common denominator of being hard; we’re not creating jazzy, smooth tunes." The second part of its title is a nod to the eye-watering list of collaborators on the record: gqom pioneer DJ Lag, the godmother of amapiano DBN Gogo, London-based 3-Step and Afro house driving force Kwamzy, Jamaican-Canadian 'Infinity Club' star BAMBII, Brazilian funk tastemaker Clementaum, jungle and UK funky legend Scratcha DVA... and that is just scratching the surface. To achieve this, State OFFF called on the community he'd built from sharing music, trading on his currency in those communities to bring disparate underground club sounds into one eclectic record. 

Originally from Zimbabwe, State OFFF started making music just after leaving high school. “It was a typical coming-of-age Fruity Loops situation,” he says. Five years spent in South Africa helped introduce him to his beloved gqom, but despite this, it wasn't until later that he was really able to take the next step. “A lot of people pursue their passions young in European cities, but where I'm from, there's an inverted way of doing things; you have to build a whole career and then pursue your passions.” With a newfound work-life balance, he began making gqom shortly after moving to Amsterdam, though in his newfound home, disconnected from the origins of the sounds he loved, it wasn't easy to get the ball rolling. “I started trying to make gqom, but it didn't sound like what I liked, I think mostly due to the fact I was making it in isolation,” he says. “You can never make a sound that is representative of the scene that you're not from or not embedded in.” 

Read this next: Listen to a playlist of gqom classics curated by Griffit Vigo

The lightbulb moment came after he shared a gqom edit of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion's 'WAP', realising that, despite the distance, he could use bootleg edits to help connect unfamiliar audiences with the genre. “It got my name out there,” he says. “Then, slowly but surely, through conversations with artists like Kiing Bhutie and Omaqoqa, I started to be more connected to the scene. We were sharing sample packs of my sound, then it became more representative of gqom now.” 

While edits may have been the initial step towards State OFFF reconnecting with gqom, the medium also helped him recognise the similarities with a whole range of global genres such as Brazilian funk, UKG, and Jersey club; there's even a nod to this similarity on 'Hard Currency' on the track 'Jozi Club', which combines the East Coast US-born club genre and Johannesburg's unique take on gqom. “I always joke like every time we're out and I hear another genre I'll be like 'listen to that, it's gqom',” he says. 

For his go at The Mix, State OFFF is similarly connecting the dots, this time between the sounds he grew up on and those he has encountered in the underground scenes across the world while on his "Naughty Boy World Tour" this summer. In the accompanying interview, he gets to the bottom of his love of gqom, takes us through his first set at Dekmantel Festival, and explain why he believes his multilingualism is at the heart of his love mash-ups. Listen to The Mix and read the Q&A below. 

Last month, you released your debut album ‘Hard Currency’. How has the reaction to the record been so far for you?

It was amazing to bring all these people together to make a statement about the underground. To do that through the vessel of gqom was extremely important for me. For years, I've been listening to underground music and hearing so many similarities in club genres with gqom. So the reception acknowledging that has been amazing.

Can you tell us a bit about the process of creating the record? When did it all start?

About a year ago, I was putting some tracks together and thinking about what a debut album would look like for me. I had my EP ‘Simulacra’ on CRSL (the in-house label of Seoul’s Cakeshop) a year before that, which was initially supposed to be an album, but we went for a specific sound direction, more tapered. I thought, with my background in making edits, the best avenue for creating original music would be informed by that background — blurring the line between genres, as I’ve been doing before, but in a different way. 

You've tapped an incredible list of collaborators for the album, including DJ Lag, Kwamzy, DBN Gogo, Scratcha DVA, Omagoqa, doowap. Was working with these artists important for bringing ‘Hard Currency’ to life?  

I’ve been making music as a relatively small artist for a while, but I’ve grown this community of friends in the scene through the exchange of hard music. I realised, from being in this community, I had currency to leverage. So, when I hit up everyone who eventually made it onto the album, it was a relatively easy process. The feature list looks like it's a studio album with big label backing, but it’s really not — It’s just people with whom I’ve shared music over the years.

You've said that this record is repping -  and inspired by your experiences in - the global underground; can you tell us about any key experiences that led to the creation of 'Hard Currency'?

Yeah, so I've been so lucky to go on my first "world tour" this year, I visited China, Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, South Africa, and, of course, the UK. In Hong Kong I played at a YETI OUT party, which acted as an unofficial after-party for Art Basel Hong Kong and was on the 10th floor of this warehouse. It was so surreal walking into a building where there's employees on their break in-between shifts downstairs and there is this rave happening above. Witnessing people's appreciation for sounds like UK garage there, I wasn't expecting it... people were screaming.

Why did you want to keep the focus on the underground for the record?

I feel like we're at a very critical moment in nightlife and the cost of living; it's become so untenable to throw parties, for people who love to party, to actually go to parties. We need to have a bit of a come-to-mother moment and think about what it actually means and what is required for nightlife to exist, and I think the underground is part of that. How do we equip the audience with the tools to appreciate the underground? And make that the sustainable way of having nightlife exist. That's why all the communication around ‘Hard Currency’ has been about the underground. I want to go back to DIY events... I was hearing yesterday that there's a squat rave in Amsterdam that does €1 beers, and its like, yeah, because a beer can costs €1, you know?

I also think the underground is best explored through the lens of gqom; it’s still a very underground genre. The top gqom tracks in Johannesburg right now are being made in townships in Durban. The best gqom tracks you're hearing are coming from a two-man outfit with 15 followers on Instagram based in a township in Durban, and that's why I love that genre so much. So to use that for the glue for the underground just speaks to how intentionally I think we should be treating the underground as the future of nightlife.

Read this next: How The Cost Of Living Crisis Is Impacting DJs And Producers

You paid tribute to Johannesburg on the record with your track 'Jozi Club'; what is it about the gqom scene in the city that you find exciting?

So, the scene in Johannesburg is carried by the dolls. The music is made for the dolls by the dolls. The clubs are playing music for the dolls. So much of the new sound of gqom that you're hearing from groups like Omagoqa is made for that palette. I think that's such an important part of the gqom story that not a lot of people are catching outside of South Africa — so, paying homage to that on 'Jozi Club', working with Miss Jay and working with Omagoqa and Unticipated Soundz, taking taxi gqom, Jersey club, dubstep and mashing it into something... it was incredible.  

What do you think has driven you towards this love of mashing global club sounds together?

I think it's probably that I'm multilingual. I grew up in a multilingual home, my mum is a linguist — she speaks so many languages super fluently. Whenever we'd be walking around my home city, she'd speak to someone from Malawi or someone from Mozambique as if she'd been to these countries, you know? [laughs]. It felt like there were always so many different cultures in our home, on par with mine, which just made it so easy to find similarity in cultures as I grew older.

But then, living in Amsterdam, being exposed to so many global sounds consistently and also being able to tour and travel to so many different cultures relatively quickly, that proximity to so many different sounds because of where I'm living right now, it makes it very easy to study genres persistently to authentically pay homage to them and collaborate with artists from the respective scenes.

When did you first discover gqom?

I grew up listening to this off-shoot of bacardi house from artists like DJ Mujava around the early '00s. Then I graduated to gqom I think around 2011. I remember the first time I heard a gqom track from Lucy Man, I knew 100% I was not going to listen to anything else for the rest of my life apart from gqom. The genres I was listening to before were always a subversion of 4x4, which I really enjoyed, but when I heard gqom it was a step above that — the desire to make the off-beat the beat. South African house music is great, but it’s always 4x4, and they are trying to syncopate and do all these things with the bass or whatever to make the rhythm. Gqom is just like, why are we pussy footing around the rhythm? Once I heard that, it was like home for me sonically, and I just pursued the sound, and I've been there ever since.

Is it important for you to bridge the gap between disparate underground scenes all over the world?

I honestly feel like that's a role that I've taken on, I'm not sure it's actually my responsibility [laughs]. But as someone who can see these connections, who also doesn't have the overhead of a label deal or something, I have a lot of artistic freedom to explore in a very intentional way these connections between these sounds — I do it mainly for gqom, because the more I draw parallels to other genres, then gqom will forever have context in club scenes outside of South Africa — it lives longer. Also similarly, for artists in South Africa, to expose them to other genres as well that they could infuse into gqom — for example, when I was in Johannesburg recently, I was playing Brazilian funk in a set at a club night that constituted of 100% gqom artists, you know. But that bit of education, plant a seed and see what will happen in maybe two or three years. It might not be my responsibility again [laughs], but I want to give people an option to hear something that's representative of club scenes around the world.

Has that been a big part of what you want to do as an artist? To forgo the notion that house and techno, etc., is the “glue” for dance music and instead use gqom?

Exactly. Gqom is the one genre where you can do anything; it can have the same cadence as a Baltimore club track... It's amazing.

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As someone who is based in Amsterdam, how was it to make your Dekmantel debut this summer? Was it a bit of a moment?

It really was. I'd seen DJ Lag play The Nest two years prior to that. I've seen DJ Lag play almost everywhere in Europe, I'd hop onto a flight to anywhere just to catch him — so to have that for me, it was incredible. I texted him before, and I was like, "Yo, this is crazy." I've loved Dekmantel for the longest time, and I'd just signed with my agent, and I would have put Dekmantel in my five-year plan, you know. Then, within two weeks, the agent said, “By the way, you're going to play Dekmantel this summer.” Also, just to be there too, what an amazing festival — I think I racked up, no joke, like 38,000 steps on the Saturday. No joke.

Oh wow.

I know, I was doing too much [Laughs].

Look, it's a long walk through the park sometimes...

Yeah, it’s definitely that [laughs]. But yeah, I'm really lucky to be playing Dekmantel Selectors for the first time next year. I love the Dekmantel family. I actually got to model for them two years before playing, so it felt like a bit of a full-circle moment.

What is coming up next for you?

Yeah, so, a whole bunch of stuff over here [laughs], but I'm working on an electronic live gqom performance at the moment – so that's what's next.

Can you tell us about your mix?

I open and close this mix with the music I grew up on. Everything in between is shaped by the underground scenes around the world that have felt like temporary homes while I’ve been on tour. My sound draws direct inspiration from these club traditions; there is gqom everywhere for those with ears to listen.

State OFFF's 'Hard Currency' is out now, buy it here.

Megan Townsend is Mixmag's Deputy Editor, follow her on Twitter

Tracklist
Doc Shebeleza — Ebumnandini
Fixate — Ruminate
State OFFF, Thobeka & ZVRI — All Night
Joy Orbison ft. Lil Yachty, Future and Playboi Carti — flex fm (freddit)
Satl — Werk It (Original Mix)
State OFFF, Ziggy Twiss, Clementaum, Lamsi — Pistola
State OFFF — Durban Funk (PVSSY Remix)
Walque — POHODA
Cardozo — 03AM
Lamsi, Afu Sensi, TNO — ALA SANI
Club Cab — Generator
Club Cab — (Ain’t A) Cop
Linkwood — What’s Up With the Underground?
MXXWLL — BreakFlip (Extended Mix)
Que DJ ft. Madanon — Maku Wrong
Introspekt — Prototype III
State OFFF, Black Rave Culture, Rye Rye, Toby Davis — Kalahari Ferrari
Black Rave Culture — Dick Control
Black Rave Culture – Crazy Legs (JIALING Remix)
Miss Jay — @t The Club
DJ Bark Lee — M.O.N.I.C.A.
Half Queen, State OFFF — Big Choon (Miss Jay Remix)
Pinch — Punisher (somejerk 160 version)
Vv Pete — Bacardi Papi (Xavier BLK Remix)
STYN — $bill
STYN – BURN UP
Joe Shirimani – N' Wamitwa