Sibot
© Jonathan Ferreira / Red Bull Content Pool
Music

A Brief History of: Sibot

Taking a looked at an almost 20 decade long career of one of South Africa's best music producers
Written by Themba Kriger
4 min readPublished on
From his role as scratch DJ in Max Normal, to projects such as Constructus Corporation, The Real Estate Agents and Playdoe as well as his solo work, Sibot has had an interesting career in music. Check out this brief history of his career to find out more about the work he’s done over the years.
The Early Years - 1999
I guess I saw scratching on TV. I’d seen it before but now I was kind of understanding DJing. I saw it and it was weird, different. It just grabbed something in me. So I came to Cape Town and was DJing a little bit, started doing production and joined 5th Floor the rap group.
Sibot

Sibot

© Jonathan Ferreira / Red Bull Content Pool

2000 - Max Normal
In 2000 I went back to Joburg and started DJing at 206 and met Ninja at a party at Cool Runnings restaurant in the basement. He saw me scratching at the Cool Runnings party and he had never seen anyone in South Africa scratch words. With Mark on bass and Sean on drums and my scratch records I might get a sample from a record and make a beat and they would take over. So the idea, which was quite unique, was to treat the turntable like a sampler.
2002 - Constructus Corporation
Markus and I had been hanging out through a mutual friend. He was making really fucking weird, experimental music. I introduced him to Ninja. That for me was one of the most exciting times in my career because it was such a new territory. It felt like we had rejected success and this industry and were there to push boundaries. To create unique, interesting music.
2003 - Real Estate Agents
Real Estate Agents came from Markus and I firing Ninja and my dad also influenced it quite strangely. I invited my parents to the Construct launch at the Bassline in Joburg and afterwards Markus and I just stayed on stage and played the songs we were working on. When I got off stage my dad said he really like what Markus and I did and it hit me that you can just have two guys doing something.
2007 - Debut Solo Album: In With The Old
I was always going to make that album, just didn’t know how to stand on my own and it took really long to figure that out. Eventually I built up a body of work. It was a really cool project, it was very personal. It was everything that I’d been influenced by, everything I love. Here it is, now let’s move on to something else.
2008 - Playdoe
The reason I actually put Playdoe together, I’d released In With The Old and had done a little theatre show but I didn’t have a live show that I could get on stage and perform, but the French label wanted to put a tour together. One of the acts that we were going to be touring with was M. Sayyid from Antipop Consortium and Spoek was like “you can’t not take me” and that’s how we formed Playdoe.
2012 - Throw Away EP
I hadn’t released shit for ages on a personal level. I had a realisation that the industry was so disposable. I had this idea of disposable music, that music doesn’t last. That’s why it’s called Throw Away.
2016 - V.L.D.T
V.L.D.T. is going to house a bunch of releases. I didn’t want an album to drop that is just one project I wanted it to be an ongoing project. V.L.D.T. is validate, so it’s a validation of myself as an artist in making a project that is entwined with itself and is constantly growing. It’s cool that this is coming 10 years after In With The Old because it is the new album.