Portable
emerged out of the ruins of a post-apartheid era. He grew up in the impoverished
Cape Town township, Bonteheuwel (Bounty Valley) aka "Beverly Hills". As a teenager in the late eighties, he would spend time at makeshift shebeens (illegal bars) that doubled as clubs. At shebeens, DJs, despite apartheid sanctions, managed to find tunes like the Master C+J's "Dub Love", the Housemaster Boys' "Housenation"and Adonis' "No Way Back." The raw basement feel of these tracks would have an impact on the music Portable would later produce. In 1994, Portable signed to a local label called Teal Trutone Records and released "Dance for Freedom", an album specially produced to coincide with the first democratic elections in South Africa. The music came from the Township house scene that infused traditional African songs with deep house.
In 1997, Portable relocated to London. His production and DJ sets have captured the imagination of the London underground. Encouraged by this response, he launched Mahala, a weekly Sunday night exploring electronica, minimal house and techno from all over the globe. The next logical step was to initiate the now legendary Mahala warehouse parties which have presented an alternative to the commercialization of house music in london. This year sees the release of Patterns and Signals, Portable's EP on the San Francisco-based label Context.
Context discography:
TEXT06 [Thredes and Vaynes] compilation : "Curve"
TEXT07 [Patterns and Signals] ep
TEXT10a [Unravelled] Vol. 1 : Sutekh remix