STATE OFFF

For State OFFF, gqom isn’t a genre, it’s a weapon, and he’s firing it into the global club circuit. Born in Zimbabwe and now based in Amsterdam, he works in the cracks between scenes, taking Durban’s Gqom, São Paulo’s funk, Baltimore club, London’s basslines and welding them into something heavier, stranger, and impossible to ignore. His 2024 EP Simulacra was the breakthrough, a record that pushed gqom’s minimalism into collision with the raw energy of Brazilian club music. “Durban Funk” became the calling card, with its wicked bassline that felt like a steel beam dropped on the floor, brutal enough to land on Mixmag’s Top Tracks of the Year. His debut album, Hard Currency, is stitched together from the cultures that shape the global underground. Recorded mainly during State OFFF’s 24-stop world tour, it moves through the backyards of Pretoria, warehouse parties in London, and Johannesburg’s heavy nights. Parts of it were recorded in the Himalayas, where silence and altitude carved space for the sub-shaking low end that once rattled cars and street corners in Miami, while others were born in the chaos of Amsterdam’s raucous club scene.