With A Semblance: Of Return, South African drummer, composer, and bandleader Asher Gamedze gathers a close ensemble of longtime collaborators to explore what he calls “practices of assembly” - ways of coming together, making sound, and imagining new and old modes of freedom. Based in the independent music scenes of Cape Town and rooted in Pan-Africanism and Black Consciousness, Of Return extends the political and musical commitments that have defined Gamedze’s work since Dialectic Soul (On The Corner, 2020), while opening a newly collective chapter in his practice, this time on Northern Spy Records.
Of Return is an album about a grounding in local context, in collective work, in the sonic and social memory of South Africa and about reaching outward, imagining solidarities that extend beyond geographic and political borders. Musically, the record carries forward the lineages that shape Gamedze’s work and opens new spaces for communing. If Dialectic Soul, Turbulence and Pulse (International Anthem, 2022) and Constitution (International Anthem, 2024) were statements of direction, Of Return is a gathering place: a living room, a rehearsal, a shady club, a study group, a home.
The band on the album - Ru Slayen (percussion), Nobuhle Ashanti (keys & synth), Zwide Ndwandwe (bass), and Keegan Steenkamp (trumpet), with Gamedze on drums - formed as a social unit: a group for whom music is part of a broader shared life, full of playing, thinking, laughing, and struggling. That ethos animates the music. Across the album’s two sides, Of Return moves with a grounded, searching energy, shifting between group vocals, groove-heavy ensemble passages, and moments of stark melodic clarity. The grooves are earthy and lived-in; the improvisations feel like conversations; the lyric fragments echo the project’s probing around notions of return as integral to any forward, future-oriented motion.
The album’s title connects to the political vision articulated in Gamedze’s “From Cape to Cairo / Outwith” essay, written while preparing his guest curation for Le Guess Who? 2025. There, Gamedze traces the dual histories of the phrase “From Cape to Cairo”: first as a colonial fantasy of extraction and expansion, and then as a struggle slogan of Pan-African liberation, a phrase that “gestures toward the dream of liberating the continent from imperialist plunder, colonial and neo-colonial oppression.”
Of Return enacts both return and departure, or more precisely, extension/elaboration. This it does through a rootedness in the traditions and politics of the Cape underground, and opening a sonic invitation to dream, to struggle together, and, fundamentally, to assemble.
Of Return is an album about a grounding in local context, in collective work, in the sonic and social memory of South Africa and about reaching outward, imagining solidarities that extend beyond geographic and political borders. Musically, the record carries forward the lineages that shape Gamedze’s work and opens new spaces for communing. If Dialectic Soul, Turbulence and Pulse (International Anthem, 2022) and Constitution (International Anthem, 2024) were statements of direction, Of Return is a gathering place: a living room, a rehearsal, a shady club, a study group, a home.
The band on the album - Ru Slayen (percussion), Nobuhle Ashanti (keys & synth), Zwide Ndwandwe (bass), and Keegan Steenkamp (trumpet), with Gamedze on drums - formed as a social unit: a group for whom music is part of a broader shared life, full of playing, thinking, laughing, and struggling. That ethos animates the music. Across the album’s two sides, Of Return moves with a grounded, searching energy, shifting between group vocals, groove-heavy ensemble passages, and moments of stark melodic clarity. The grooves are earthy and lived-in; the improvisations feel like conversations; the lyric fragments echo the project’s probing around notions of return as integral to any forward, future-oriented motion.
The album’s title connects to the political vision articulated in Gamedze’s “From Cape to Cairo / Outwith” essay, written while preparing his guest curation for Le Guess Who? 2025. There, Gamedze traces the dual histories of the phrase “From Cape to Cairo”: first as a colonial fantasy of extraction and expansion, and then as a struggle slogan of Pan-African liberation, a phrase that “gestures toward the dream of liberating the continent from imperialist plunder, colonial and neo-colonial oppression.”
Of Return enacts both return and departure, or more precisely, extension/elaboration. This it does through a rootedness in the traditions and politics of the Cape underground, and opening a sonic invitation to dream, to struggle together, and, fundamentally, to assemble.
released February 27, 2026
Album and all songs composed, arranged and produced by Asher Gamedze.
Recorded by Ben Jamieson at Concept Records in Cape Town. Additional recording by
Asher Gamedze at home in THE LAB in Cape Town.
Mixed by Ben Jamieson and Asher Gamedze at Concept Records in Cape Town.
Mastered by Chris Weiss in New York City.
Text:
Excerpts from A Semblance reading group of Steve Biko’s “On Death” (available in the
collection of Biko’s writings I write what I like, Picador Africa: Johannesburg, 2004) appear on
“Stranger No Death”, “Progressive”, “Air”, and “Lowland.”
All other words, poems and lyrics on the album written by Asher Gamedze.
A Semblance:
Asher Gamedze – drums, reading group, group vocals.
Ru Slayen – percussion, reading group, group vocals.
Nobuhle Ashanti – keyboards and synths, reading group, group vocals.
Zwide Ndwandwe – bass, reading group, group vocals.
Keegan Steenkamp – trumpet, reading group, group vocals.
Acknowledgement: This project has been a DIY effort made possible through the dedication, skills, love, grit, commitment, and generosity of many people. Principally the musicians – Ru, Nobuhle, Zwide and Keegan – thank you for putting yourselves in the middle of this music and for everything on the music’s out sides which makes the music possible. Lungiswa, who is basically part of the band, and graciously tolerates our rehearsals, comes to all our gigs, shouts, sings, dances and listens. Big Thanks to the deep waters in which we swim and to those who’ve come and gone before us. To Ben Jamieson and Benjy de Kock at Concept Records – this record couldn’t have been done anywhere else. Chris Weiss, Rob Scott, Clem Carr, FMFP, Dulie, Micaela, Louis Moholo-Moholo (rest easy), melrocque, Leila and Nish, Northern Spy, Amilcar Cabral and the PAIGC, and the Gamedze sisters, we give thanks. And to the broader community that we are part of, bands we have played with, everyone who has booked us for a gig, anyone who has come to watch us play and bought our shirts to support the making of this album, we love you: The Commons, Babbi, Densen, Operation Khataza, Awakening Social Sessions in Kimberley, Chimurenga and the Pan African Space Station, Native Rebels in Soweto, Thania Petersen. No thanks to Untitled Basement.
To all those kindred of spirit and sensibility who refuse to accept that everything is in its right place, let’s keep it moving.
Album and all songs composed, arranged and produced by Asher Gamedze.
Recorded by Ben Jamieson at Concept Records in Cape Town. Additional recording by
Asher Gamedze at home in THE LAB in Cape Town.
Mixed by Ben Jamieson and Asher Gamedze at Concept Records in Cape Town.
Mastered by Chris Weiss in New York City.
Text:
Excerpts from A Semblance reading group of Steve Biko’s “On Death” (available in the
collection of Biko’s writings I write what I like, Picador Africa: Johannesburg, 2004) appear on
“Stranger No Death”, “Progressive”, “Air”, and “Lowland.”
All other words, poems and lyrics on the album written by Asher Gamedze.
A Semblance:
Asher Gamedze – drums, reading group, group vocals.
Ru Slayen – percussion, reading group, group vocals.
Nobuhle Ashanti – keyboards and synths, reading group, group vocals.
Zwide Ndwandwe – bass, reading group, group vocals.
Keegan Steenkamp – trumpet, reading group, group vocals.
Acknowledgement: This project has been a DIY effort made possible through the dedication, skills, love, grit, commitment, and generosity of many people. Principally the musicians – Ru, Nobuhle, Zwide and Keegan – thank you for putting yourselves in the middle of this music and for everything on the music’s out sides which makes the music possible. Lungiswa, who is basically part of the band, and graciously tolerates our rehearsals, comes to all our gigs, shouts, sings, dances and listens. Big Thanks to the deep waters in which we swim and to those who’ve come and gone before us. To Ben Jamieson and Benjy de Kock at Concept Records – this record couldn’t have been done anywhere else. Chris Weiss, Rob Scott, Clem Carr, FMFP, Dulie, Micaela, Louis Moholo-Moholo (rest easy), melrocque, Leila and Nish, Northern Spy, Amilcar Cabral and the PAIGC, and the Gamedze sisters, we give thanks. And to the broader community that we are part of, bands we have played with, everyone who has booked us for a gig, anyone who has come to watch us play and bought our shirts to support the making of this album, we love you: The Commons, Babbi, Densen, Operation Khataza, Awakening Social Sessions in Kimberley, Chimurenga and the Pan African Space Station, Native Rebels in Soweto, Thania Petersen. No thanks to Untitled Basement.
To all those kindred of spirit and sensibility who refuse to accept that everything is in its right place, let’s keep it moving.