The Kuils River DJ duo, Surreal Sessions, are headed to Amsterdam to play in the international Boiler Room music festival.
Jodie Williams and Liam Bowers, both 24, will perform on Friday November 25 at the three-day festival, which started in London’s underground music scene in 2010 and has since been held in several cities worldwide.
Surreal Sessions got their first taste of the Boiler Room when it came to Cape Town three years ago, but this is their first time playing abroad.
“We have been DJing and making music for about 10 years now. There will be different people curating different stages. The stage we will be playing on is called 3rd Space. It is curated by a Capetonian production house called Kamva collective,” says Williams.
“We are taking gqom, drum sounds and a genre called bubbling. We mix different genres, not to create a new genre but to be different. It’s basically trying to find links between types of music around the world and the diaspora of African people because there is always the link.
The excitement is building as the date for their performance approaches, he says.
“It’s mad, exciting. It’s a lot of different emotions – nervousness, excitement. There are a lot of emotions. It’s mostly the excitement and the feeling of acknowledgement, eventually, for the things we have been doing.”
The pair met at Bellville Technical High School and went on to study sound engineering at Cape Audio College. Their interest in creative music was piqued when they watched videos of electronic dance music festivals like Tomorrowland.
Bowers says: “I feel like the Surreal Session is way bigger than us at this point because we are showcasing South African talent to various platforms, and we are opening doors. I am excited to perform there; it has been a dream for me to play music.”