Johannesburg Garage Punks NECKLACE Announce Debut LP Manual Breather on Slovenly Recordings

Johannesburg’s NECKLACE are part of a restless young underground where punk, skateboarding, graffiti, zines and independent art collide without much concern for conventional music industry expectations. Alongside bands like Twenty One Children, the quartet have emerged from a loose network of DIY shows, community spaces and creative collaborations connecting Soweto with Johannesburg’s inner city. Events like Concrete Culture in Braamfontein, where live music shares space with skate sessions, street art and local filmmaking, capture the spirit of a community more interested in creating its own opportunities than waiting for outside recognition. It’s an environment built on friendships, shared resources and the simple satisfaction of making something worthwhile, which makes Slovenly Recordings a natural fit. The label discovered NECKLACE during a benefit show in Soweto, recognising the same unfiltered energy and disregard for convention that have long defined its international garage-punk catalogue.

That relationship is already taking NECKLACE beyond South Africa, with a Slovenly-backed Brazilian tour beginning December 2 in São Paulo, followed by stops in Mogi das Cruzes, Campinas, Mandinga Fest on December 12 and Santo André on December 13. Marking Slovenly’s return to Brazil after roughly a decade, the tour also establishes a new connection between South African and Brazilian underground communities, with Twenty One Children scheduled to follow in May 2027. For musicians facing the financial and bureaucratic obstacles of international touring, the opportunity offers something far more meaningful than another promotional milestone. It means getting into new rooms, meeting like-minded musicians and making a glorious racket for people who might never have encountered them otherwise. With Manual Breather, NECKLACE aren’t trying to reinvent rock and roll or manufacture some elaborate mythology around themselves. They’re four musicians from Johannesburg, six abrasive and hypnotic songs, and a band that knows exactly how much noise it needs to make.