When Philly DJ and producer Diplo (Wesley Pentz) was in South Africa a few years ago, he asked around to find out what was happening in the underground music scene.
Someone pointed Diplo in the direction of Johannesburg's BLK JKS (pronounced "blackjacks"), and intrigued by a song on their MySpace page, he arranged to meet them for an hour at the airport as he was leaving the country. That meeting led to the tour that comes to Philadelphia on Saturday night.
"To cut a long story short, those events meant other people heard about us - his people, his friends - and we met people through him. And eventually people know people who know people, and we ended up here," BLK JKS guitarist Mpumi Mcata said with a laugh.
"Here" was Bloomington, Ind., where BLK JKS recorded their debut album, After Robots, in January with producer Brandon Curtis (of the NYC indie space-rock band Secret Machines) and where they returned to play a world music festival last weekend.
That cross-pollination only hints at the swirl of sounds inside BLK JKS's dense amalgamation of styles. The four members, most in their mid-20s, grew up listening to everything from Fela Kuti and Hugh Masekela to the Velvet Underground and Santana to Public Enemy and N.W.A. And it's easy to hear elements of township jive, dub reggae, and Afrobeat within the searing guitars and dense walls of sound that BLK JKS often conjure. It's ambitious and impressive, informed by free jazz - the band is eager to make a pilgrimage to Sun Ra's house in Philly - as well as guitar rock.
According to Mcata, who is a Sonic Youth fan, "At heart, we're pretty much a noise-rock band."
In Johannesburg, they fall between the worlds of kwaito - South African hip-hop - and underground rock influenced by American and British bands, but they fit into neither.
"To them, we're just these dudes, BLK JKS, who are doing some crazy stuff," Mcata said. "So it's funny to come here and get referenced back to TV on the Radio, Mars Volta, Vampire Weekend. Those bands don't sound alike, those three bands. So something tells me we must be sounding like BLK JKS right now. It's cool, it's cool."
BLK JKS and Edison Proposal play at 9 p.m. Saturday at the M Room, 15 W. Girard Ave. Tickets: $10. Phone: 215-739-5577, www.themanhattanroom.com.
