South African jazz/electronic/ethnic musician Alex van Heerden started playing the trumpet as a teenager in the local townships of Port Elizabethand and was somewhat seen as a prodigy on his instrument when he moved to Cape Town to continue his musical explorations in the company of cape jazz legends such as Winston Mankunku, Hilton Schilder and Mac McKenzie.

In 2000 he grew fascinated by electronic music and since then has travelled yearly to Stockholm to collaborate with Håkan Lidbo and other Swedish producers, while also recording several solo projects.

His main focus has been the seemingly impossible task of combining the focused, detailed sound of Scandinavian minimal electronic music with the rich, organic, wild rhythms and textures of his native South Africa.   

In the course of his live performances, both in Europe and Africa, he has developed a unique performance style, combining laptop virtuosity with understated trumpet and vocals, performing either solo or together with pianist Magnus Johansson.

smallfunk is a music publishing and label created by keyboardist magnus johansson, based in stockholm with a satellite somewhere around cape town.

the aim is to collect and present to you a music that can be described as spacious, techy, organic, understated, abstract even, but always very funky.

the bulk of the music is composed by alex van heerden, well known trumpet player and singer on the jazz and ethnic music circuit of south africa. he has during the last few years melted these influences together with the sounds of european/scandinavian minimal electronic styles of techno and glitch, resulting in some nice and truly original blends of rural/urban club music.

--- ---

current projects are:

bushtech - minimal rural techno

nefertiti - insect jazz

tales of droëland - more wasteland beauty; AvH with paul miller.

pinkfield$ - dark erotic and fragile; alex with kate ehrhardt

dandyesque - alex van heerden in the psychedelic dub-room

afrodisiac - music of secret plants

hemisfär(hemisphere) - electronic karoo poetry in afrikaans