John Wizards might have started in Maputo. It also might have started in Cape Town. It certainly owes a debt to Dar es Salaam.

These are the three places that band leader and producer John Withers either travelled through or lived in, that he feels have had a marked influence on his musical output. They also happen to be cities in which Emmanuel Nzaramba, John Wizards Rwandan singer has lived too.

Since John and Emmanuel first met, John Wizards became a band and are now based in Cape Town, South Africa and ‘Lusaka by Night’ introduces this rich band to the world.

The single is a beautiful mix of the traditional and the futuristic as Emmanuel Nzaramba’s  pitch-corrected vocals intone, in his first language of Kinyarwanda, about the Children of Africa coming together over the lightest of highlife guitar riffs and subtle pools of echoing synth and warping bass. ‘I Is’ follows, sketching out a lazy melody of stumbling, wobbly keys, between snapping rhythms.

Next up is Ital Tek’s techno remix of album track ‘Tet Lek Schrempf’, looping up the original’s lush conch shell melody and bent synths into a joyous rush.

LV take ‘Lusaka by Night’ and turn it into a warped slow jam, reversing and punching out elements of the melody over tough subs, letting the pitch corrected melody spill out over the drums.

01 Lusaka By Night
02 I Is
03 Tet Lek Schrempf (Ital Tek Remix)
04 Lusaka By Night (LV Remix)