South African vocalist and pianist Toya Delazy has spent a decade refusing to be pinned down—pop, jazz and electronic music all feature in her back catalogue—and Resurrection might be her boldest pivot yet. Released today on her own Afrorave label, the single is the first taste of the album campaign she’s been teasing since early in the year, and it finds the Zulu singer trading the sleekness of her earlier records for something darker, heavier and unmistakably South African: a thick, rolling gqom throb carried along by techno’s relentless four-to-the-floor.
The production credits read like a summit of the UK–South Africa axis. More Time Records founders Ahadadream and Sam Interface, whose London base has made them the go-to producers for a new generation of South African vocalists, team up with Durban’s Mxshi Mo, and the three of them build Delazy a bed of sound that feels both metropolitan and deeply rooted. There’s a pleasing symmetry to the pairing: a British duo whose own sound was shaped by gqom working alongside a producer who grew up inside it.
The track itself doesn’t waste a second of its three minutes and twenty seconds. The kick is huge but dry, landing with a physical thump rather than a spray of reverb, whilst shaker loops and off-kilter percussion keep the groove from ever settling. Delazy’s voice floats above it all, slipping between Zulu and English, half-sung and half-chanted, and the way it coils around the bassline—a slow, deliberate pulse that drops into the mix like a heartbeat—gives the record its title’s sense of rising, fully formed, out of the dark.
As an opening statement for a new campaign, Resurrection is a smart, confident one. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, it keeps the voice front and centre, and it wears its gqom heritage with pride rather than as a stylistic garnish. If this is the direction of travel for the album to come, Delazy’s Afrorave era is one to watch closely.
