IT’S THOR PRONOUNCED “TOR” – A CANDID CHAT WITH THOR RIXON AND NIC PREEN FOR CEC.
I feel defeated. Musically and creatively defeated. I wish I could blame it all on Covid. I want to tell you that because of Covid-19 the musicians in South Africa have been hit with less gigging opportunities, reduced rates and a lack of venues to perform in. I want to say due to Covid-19, I don’t receive an income anymore for the 9-5-9 job I choose to do. All the time spent behind computer programmes and media platforms relentlessly pushing the craft upon others, sell sell sell! Did I mention the travel costs, gear expense, insurance rates and costly studio time? I want to say that now, because of the pandemic musicians are on a constant plug to be heard against the streaming sites’ algorithms or major label foot-holds within an industry we’ve now been told “begins in the bedroom…and never leaves”.
I want to tell you that Covid, with it all its pressures has diminished the number of people at my shows. A line I find myself often using when asked “So how’s the music going? Shame, not good right now hey?”
Really it hasn’t been that good for a number of years now. Really the pandemic hasn’t been all that bad to my musical endeavours if I compare them to recent years. I’ve only plateaued. Music seems to me, as similar a struggle as it ever was for myself and the other independent artists not chasing a dog around their room in the hopes of a viral TikTok. Says me, I’ve definitely chased the dog this past year in lock down. It’s depressing.
Video killed the radio star, tape killed the vinyl, CD killed the tape and then the Mp3 Player managed to scratch the CD before the iPod finished him off with a torch. Then suddenly, an “inspired vinyl” tried to come back and kill everyone but was very short lived in the wake of the genocide that would be the streaming site. The streaming platforms wiped out all of the above and so it seems, the independent artist too.
Before I get started on the death of live music and the rise of electronic music’s most recent sought after booking: “nature-in-the-dark-meets-strobe-light” or try to remind you of the amount Spotify pay an artist per stream (Psst! It’s $0.00437. That’s currently R0.60) I want to give you a little hope…
Let me tell you a story about someone who has always given it to me.
I first met Thor Rixon in Cape St Francis at a Lumo party in 2009 (Sex On Fire blaring in the background) a different Thor to the Thor I would meet a year later at a Hog Hoggidy Hog show in my high school gymnasium where a band he played the trumpet in had just opened (Checked Zebra). I then met him again outside a bar in Claremont, both very lost, Thor had played a DJ set consisting mostly of Dubstep under the moniker ‘Skrum’. I say we met because he forgot who I was (Sorry Thor, but it’s true) and also because each time we did he would be different. Dressed different and looked different, but spoke the same way. Calm chuckles with a smile, his shoulders always bouncing.
“Video killed the radio star, tape killed the vinyl, CD killed the tape and then the Mp3 Player managed to scratch the CD before the iPod finished him off with a torch.”
Regardless of meeting for the first time each time, Thor and I would talk for hours about music, music in South Africa, music in the world, music in film and then film in music.
I forget how many more times I really met Thor but not long after these conversations would turn into a great friendship and become our usual. In years to come, we’d intertwine ourselves in the local Cape Town music scene with various different projects, often frequenting the same places and achieving the same successes. We’d discuss how we were to make a name for ourselves doing what we love. I remember taking to my own projects, a mirror of how Thor would take to his. I saw Thor do the unexpected and surprise his audiences in performances, then again in his music. The most important mirror, however, has been Thor’s outlook and confidence in doing what he says and wants. The difference between us here was how we showed this confidence: Thor was confident in his ability to create or at least try everything. Where I was often, maybe only confident in the ability to show confidence.
Thor has a can-do attitude to creativity. This is what sets him apart from other independent artists following their dreams. Unlike myself at times, he is no pessimist.
On a recent call with the CEC team he confirmed this with me:
“Life is short, just do what you want to do in this life because one day you’re gonna get old and maybe not be able to? Then look back and think f**k I wish I’d done that!.. If you just take it in little bits, just start…don’t care what anyone thinks, do what YOU want to do and enjoy yourself whilst doing it. It’s cheesy basic stuff! But I stand by it.”
Talent and hard work aside, he believes in the process and the enjoyment of creating.
You see this enjoyment through his social media presence (something that he has said causes him great anxiety).
Thor shares his adoration for his gear: from live-set synth builds to his camera gear he is using on his latest films and videos.
Best we believe that it’s not all about the process with Thor, as we’ve come to know with the sheer amount of work he’s released in the past 10 years, from multiple genre bending albums to two short films with longtime collaborator and Checked Zebra frontman: Rob Smith.
Thor and I separated from each other for a bit as he broke away from the Cape Town scene and took to his art to the world, more specifically, Berlin.
In his own words, why he left;
“Within certain genres of South Africa you hit a certain ceiling and there are only so many festivals and places you can play before you’ve done them all and you’ve done them all three or four times. You have to leave, you have to travel, you have to spread your music to other audiences and any artist who’s been doing it for a certain amount of time will reach that point I feel, and find that they have to move.”
I met up again with Thor recently when he visited Cape Town this past summer. Selfishly I’d hoped my creative sparring partner had decided to finally return home but alas he’d come to avoid a very cold Berlin in lockdown and to work on another film project. We hear whispers of a feature.
Unfortunately, Thor is not returning home anytime soon.
When asked; “When I first got here I was blown away, the city was like a festival, the streets were filled with artists and people constantly making connections and making stuff together, it was incredible”
“Then suddenly, an “inspired vinyl” tried to come back and kill everyone but was very short lived in the wake of the genocide that would be the streaming site. The streaming platforms wiped out all of the above and so it seems, the independent artist too.”
If it wasn’t just for Thor’s fresh start in a new city, Berlin supports creatives unlike anywhere in the world. The city-state of Berlin paid out more than 1.4 billion to self-employed people and small business owners within the city at the beginning of the pandemic.
Thor Rixon a young South African on a creative arts visa being one of them;
“I couldn’t believe it, I thought: I am never leaving this country”.
With support for the arts and a creative infrastructure like this, it’s no wonder musicians of the world flock to Berlin to follow in the steps of Bowie. For Thor, however, it wasn’t Bowie but one of our own Cape Town-to-Berlin exports; Alice Phoebe Lou.
Thor on how we initially met Alice and set his fate on Berlin;
“I was recording with her above the Wakaberry on Kloof Street in our Naas offices (Naas: a creative agency Thor began with friends in 2014) when she asked if I was looking for a place to stay… I said yes and she took me to the Camp Street house just down the road’
From there, Thor would bunker in the second-room-on -the-right and become the many Thor Rixon’s we know and love today. From the viral dreadlock shedding, end-of-bread-advocating Thor we saw in his ‘Fuk Bread’ music video (shot outside said bedroom) to the Thor headlining festivals across the nation, head bobbing up and down behind mountains of his own home-built modular synths and drum machines, we saw a variety of Thor Rixon.
The actor, the storyteller, the clown, the dancer, the social injustice advocate, we even saw Thor shoot through Longstreet traffic daily, leg high in air peddling a kids scooter, mullet flailing to keep up with creative genius.
Somehow all of these Thor’s still held a singular thread,
Thor would appreciate it if I called it a “dread”.
This singular dread that was hard to pin down.
Thor himself has often wondered whether; due to the mass of his creation whether he should be the many Thor’s or someone different altogether.
“It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, I create lots of different stuff… it’s very varied…I’m almost unable to stick with one thing for a certain amount of time because I get bored of it quite soon…or I just need to explore and try new things all the time.. and I’ve had a lot of conversations with people who listen to music a lot and say that when they find an artist they like, they usually don’t enjoy when an artist is trying lots of different things because when you fall in love with an artist you usually like their work in a certain way and sometimes when they change it’s not really your taste...’
In terms of an alias…I don’t want him to have one and I don’t think you should either. I want Thor Rixon and the arts to be under one roof, one Google search, the Donald Glover without the Childish Gambino, I want him to be his creative self. Which may be many different selves. Brown bear don’t care! I just want more! More Thor!
(By the way; I left this to the end of this article so you didn’t trip up the whole way in case you’d been previously mistaken).
It’s Thor pronounced “Tor” – I’ve heard some of his biggest fans still pronounce him the “God of Thunder”.
And here’s why I believe I’ve found the singular dread that ties everything together. In a dread bow.
I think you know what I’m about to say…
and it’s not ‘Thor should get his dreads back’
It’s his undying enthusiasm to create and inspire.
A role-model for young musicians, film-makers and creative entrepreneurs to follow their dream by just beginning and enjoying the process.Regardless of Covid-19, a diminishing live-music industry, influx of whatever nonsense I spun in the first paragraph…what was I even saying back then? It’s all forgotten in the wave of inspiration I get when I think about my good friend, Thor. Who right now (just like you, I hope) is about to create something new and fantastic for some else to find enjoyment in, and more importantly himself.
Written by: Nic Preen
Editor: Candice Erasmus
