Link Highlight: Electrotrash.co.za

Some people around Gauteng that enjoy dancing may fondly remember a series of parties called "The Secret". To put it bluntly, what the Secret did makes almost any party in South Africa right now seem ridiculously safe and unadventurous. They were making kids dance to punk-funk/ electro-rock/ dance-punk almost half a decade before it started spreading across the country.

The first Secret I went to to was in February 2005. It was a pretty incredible night, getting to dance to all this music I'd been loving, but had never got to hear out. I was also introduced to some pretty fantastically cool people on this fateful night and one of them was a white kid with an over-sized fro that introduced himself as Rick Disco.

Between rocking out together to David Bowie, Rick and I spoke a whole bunch that night. It turned out he'd driven all the way from Pretoria for the party and was particularly there for the electro. While electro as we know it was only in it's fledgling stages there were tracks by acts like Vitalic, Fischerspooner and a single remix by Justice that were Secret anthems. These anthems, and the rest of the proto-electro that was coming out of the Secret's sound-system, where the main reason Rick was there that night.

Rick told me that he had this friend Themba, and that together they were building a website that would be called Electrotrash.co.za. I told him I thought it was a cool name. He told me it was going to be a platform to expose people making electro in South Africa once people started producing stuff like that. I told him I thought it was an awesome idea. Honestly I didn't know if the site would ever happen. It did. Electrotrash went live round mid 2005 (if I remember right) and initially it focused more on local parties playing electro music than local people making the stuff. But over the past few years that's changed drastically. As more and more people have begun producing music within the genre, Electrotrash has been there to get it out to the people. Jacob Israel, Johnny Neon, MTKIDU, Yesterday's Pupil, as soon as all these new electronically oriented acts popped up Electrotrash was right there to spread the word.

Now with SA acts like Lapse and Haezer gaining major international attention, Electrotrash has become not only become a home for South African fans of electro, but the defining platform for international fans of South African electro to keep up to date with what's happening over here.

So yeah, anyone into the more electronically oriented end of the musical spectrum: head over to www.electrotrash.co.za and bookmark it now! Thanks Rick and Themba. Thamba.