Gonubie - Signals At Both Ears (2023)

Born and based in Cape Town, South Africa, Gonubie is an interdisciplinary artist with a background in fine art, landscape architecture and urban design. A classically trained musician and flautist, her debut album, Signals at Both Ears, acts as a personal sonic exploration of the notion of space and ideas surrounding the making of home.

On Signals at Both Ears, sonic elements are combined organically through a process akin to painting. Incorporating the movement of synthesisers and percussive drumming with expansive chords, the compositions aim to immerse the listener in a world where sound is the primary tool for navigation and finding refuge.

“It is the spatial nature of sound through both its structural layering of components and its ability to craft the feeling of space intangibly that I carry with me in both music making and sharing.”

Work on the album began as a break from her work under the moniker ‘raresoftware’, a role that sees her DJ at some of South Africa’s most renowned underground parties, radio shows and festivals. Whilst her work behind the decks leans towards underground dance music, Gonubie developed a love of ambient music in private and began creating music under her new alias.

Taking her name from a river and area in South Africa’s Eastern Cape where her mother was raised, Gonubie’s focus is the process in which the individual components of a song form an experience and translate to feeling. For Gonubie it is the human mechanism that allows for a listener's immersion into a world crafted by sound.

“The name for this record is derived from the process of ‘binaural fusion’ in which sounds received from each individual ear are processed by the brain to produce a unified perception.”