Johannesburg is known for its fast pace, deeply layered multi-racial musical scenes and a slightly foreboding feeling when cruising the city at night. This makes for a perfect setting for the electro based outfit, Devil’s Cartel, to come from. Their sound is a mixture of cross-cultural and genre-twisting electro, probably best described as a fusion of dark trip-hop, sultry vocals and eclectic electronic sounds.

Comparing it to the city of Johannesburg might seem a strange thing to do at first, but once you’ve listened to their album, Disengage, you will get what where I’m coming from. Devil’s Cartel, as their name suggests, is something other than the norm. Their music is layered with strange and dark tweaks, blips and bleeps that flow from your speakers in a dark variation of breaks, 6/8 and 4/4 beats that become a synergy of colour. Dark Colours.

Devil’s Cartel is made up of mainly two musicians: Ian Holden and Louise Eksteen. They do make use of other musicians and do collaborations, but they are the two constants in this group.

Ian’s career in the music industry started in 1992 as a DJ spinning deep house which triggered his first interests in music. He soon left DJing for good and started toying with computers and production. After successfully selling a track to a large corporation, he was able to study and fulfil his dream. While studying he started toying with the ideas of starting his own production company and after obtaining his formal qualification, Filtered Hues was born. Filtered Hues was mainly a fusion of Breaks, Trip Hop and Tech-House with one track landing on the SA based Tribal -Tech label, Afroboogie. His experience with Filtered Hues could most likely be billed as the foundations for Devil’s Cartel

At the moment Ian is working at Foghound Studios in Midrand, South Africa, as a full time Sound Engineer which is in my opinion one of the things that sets him apart from other electro producers in South Africa. His productions are always crisp, and clear with a sense of heaviness and forboding. You often find that electro comes across as being too loaded with sounds and you can easily lose the quality of some or most of the song when this is done. Ian’s mastering skills are becoming legendary in music circles in SA for this exact reason. He can still overload a song with so many sounds that it makes your ears tingle, but none of them lose that quality or sense of purpose.

The other half of Devils Cartel, Louise Eksteen has worked on numerous production based projects since her early teens. These endeavours would include work alongside the electronic group Strange, dance-label Afroboogie, producer Simon Fine and AKA Lightsleeper (with whom she made her live debut at the Flux festival in 2003). She was also involved with Dark Templar, an electro-Goth band and Merchandize, an acid-jazz group. Louise performed numerous gigs in Pretoria and Johannesburg with the two aforementioned bands in 2003/4. In 2005 and early 2006 she performed all over London with Liquor Store, an Electronic rock duo, whilst recording the last few tracks for Devils Cartels Disengage.