Ruff Majik Premiere Ruff Majik vs. The World Covers
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on November 7th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
To be sure, Ruff Majik don’t owe 2023 any favors. The South African four-piece released their third full-length, Elektrik Ram (review here), through Mongrel Records and toured in a place I was. Word is they’ll be back out next year, too. As far as I’m concerned, they’re all paid up. But there’s no rest for the restless, and as the year begins to conceive of winding down, the band have two covers taken from the soundtrack of the 2010
film Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, based on Brian Lee O’Malley‘s graphic novel series, pretty much for the hell of it. There’s a Netflix show coming out this month. Fine. I still count fun as the primary motivator.
No, I mean that. Granted, in the ‘age of content’ and active social media engagement, one is driven — in part because it makes other people money — to create something new, something fun, something sharable every two to three minutes. That aside, I take guitarist/vocalist Johni Holiday — joined by bassist Jimmy Glass, guitarist/backing vocalist Cowboy Bez and drummer Steven Bosman in the endeavor — at his word when he says he’s a fan of the movie and the franchise built up around it. And if you don’t know the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack, it’s got a ton of songs by Beck — who even if you don’t dig his aesthetic, you know can write a song — and Frank Black, along with Emily Haines and James Shaw of Broken Social Scene and a bunch of others. “Black Sheep” is by the latter two, “Threshold” is by Beck, and there are Rolling Stones and T-Rex covers, so it’s not material thought up by writers sitting around a table working on a screenplay, which, yes, does happen, but part of the experience of the film. The music is essential and a very specific kind of cool.
Elektrik Ram has been the soundtrack to much of my 2023, and pretty essential in its own right, and though I don’t have info on when these recordings were done, Ruff Majik have established that in any given album cycle they might make a comic book or somesuch. And in acknowledgement of how hot-iron-being-struck they are in the studio and on stage, I’m not going to complain with more recorded material from this band right now. Further, 
even if the concept hits you flat — you never saw the movie, you don’t care about it — “Threshold” is a sub-two-minute careen that spends its second half in a hooky wormhole to proto-punk triumph, and “Black Sheep” is a quirky piano ballad with purposefully grandiose keyboard string sounds, and it’s still done in less than three minutes, so nobody’s trying to take up your whole day here.
If you dug Elektrik Ram, though, think of these arrangements as complements for songs like “She’s Still a Goth” and the title-track or “Chemically Humanized.” Similarly honed edges. “Black Sheep” doesn’t go quite as dark lyrically as the latter, but it’s not far off, and the charge in “Threshold” is by now a Ruff Majik signature. I felt extraordinarily lucky to see this band play this year. I’d feel even luckier if I got to again in 2024, and while I won’t profess the same attachment to the Scott Pilgrim source material as Holiday, I get it. You can enjoy and/or make music your whole life, but some part of you will always be chasing the dragon of that feeling of how things hit when you were young discovering it for the first time. Paying tribute to that, giving a little insight and nuance into the story of where Ruff Majik are coming, and heavy besides. There you go. Content delivered.
“Black Sheep” and “Threshold” both stream below — I don’t know if they’re pressing a 7″ or not, but they probably should — followed by some comment from Holiday and more info from the PR wire.
Please enjoy:
Ruff Majik, “Black Sheep” track premiere
Ruff Majik, “Threshold” track premiere
South African Stoner Rock Firebrands Ruff Majik Pay Homage to Scott Pilgrim vs. The World With Two Exclusive Cover Releases
STREAM ➤ https://orcd.co/-blacksheep
STREAM ➤ https://orcd.co/-threshold
Ruff Majik, the notorious heavy stoner rock band known for their thunderous riffs and explosive performances, release their tribute to Scott Pilgrim vs. The World today. The band, led by the indomitable Johni Holiday, have recorded versions of Threshold and Black Sheep, two iconic tracks from the movie’s soundtrack in anticipation of the new Netflix series launching on November 17th.
Johni has long been an ardent fan of both the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World movie and the original graphic novel by Bryan Lee O’Malley. These influences played a pivotal role in shaping the band’s identity and musical direction from the very beginning.
Commenting on the project, Holiday expressed his deep connection to the source material “I saw Scott Pilgrim vs. The World at the tender age of 18 – a high school loser with high hopes for getting my band out of the garage one day. My teenage mind completely missed the plot of the movie (or the fact that there was even any graphic novels before it) and just cared about the gnarly garage rock emanating from the soundtrack, thanks to fictional bands ‘Sex-bob-omb’ and ‘The Clash At Demonhead’. My fate was pretty much sealed after that, as I dug into every last piece of novelisation and memorabilia, I could get my hands on. Weird as it may be to say, I think the soundtrack of Scotty P. is one of my greatest influences of all time – we still say “we gotta play now & LOUD!” to each other before Ruff Majik takes the stage. So here you go, a love letter to my favourite fictional universe.”
The release features Ruff Majik’s unique take on two tracks that have become anthems in their own right.
Ruff Majik:
Johni Holiday – guitar/vocals
Cowboy Bez – guitar/backing vocals
Jimmy Glass – bass
Steven Bosman – drums
