24th post. Sovereign Academy.

"Sovereign Academy is a massive party that travels around South Africa featuring loads of exciting outfits with similar musical interests. Sovereign was launched in December 2005 and has since grown from strength to strength. Creators, Ben Rausch and Matt Suttner had a dream to expose Pretoria to the "disco punk" that Joburg kids had been grooving to for 2 years. Luckily (for Cape Town) this dream was realised quickly and has exploded to all parts of South Africa. Since its inception Academy has attracted acts like Kidofdoom, King of Town, Jonny Neon and many others who fit the bill.

Cape Town's The Final Field Trip marks the last party on the road for the Academy year before heading back to the Highveld for The Academy Graduation Party later this year.

Come the 30^th April, The Final Field Trip will hit Assembly with violent insolence! Kidofdoom are deemed to be one of the very first dance-rock acts in South Africa and have played at almost every Sovereign get together since the beginning. They played not too long ago at Evol and awesomed the jol!

Perhaps, to Cape Town, one of the most exciting acts in this very distinguished line up is the ever impressive Jonny Neon who played to a very receptive Assembly crowd in February. The only purely electro act of the night Jonny Neon is a two piece art punk synth pop act who work exclusively with analogue synths and loads of never ending visuals. They have just shot and released their first music video.

Other exciting acts for the Final Field Trip include King of Town (said to be the "godfather" of the dance-punk scene in SA) and Sassquatch. (Aka Ben Rausch and co-founder of Sovereign, Sassquatch presents half of Jonny Neon and an exciting DJ mixing music and visuals like no one's business. In celebration of The Final Field Trip, Sassquatch has put together an ecstatic mix well worth downloading.) Data Takashi and Cassioheart are two other well known acts promising to rip up the Assembly floor boards.

If this sounds like your kinda jol, hop along to the Facebook invitation for more info!

See you there…"

by Richard King