Johannesburg outfit The Brother Moves On have finally released a full-length album, their first after two EPs and a series of loose songs floating on the internet. We had a very brief conversation with frontman Siyabonga Mthembu during a listening session this past week about the significance of the album, especially following the death of founding member Nkululeko Mthembu.

What was the motivation for this gathering today? 

We wanted to play to a bunch of our friends — the people we hardly get to see — to purge the fact that a brother of ours has passed, and the fact that we need to move on and release an album in the same month without a stop. We needed to touch base before we set out and go play far away again and this helped; it was exactly that healing.

Please speak a bit on the album.

The album is weirdly enough entitled A New Myth. It was titled this while Nkush (Nkululeko) was alive. It was first gonna be The Greatest Hits and we thought we’re not that kind of band. It’s not an album that’s gonna be about buying my mom’s first house, it’s for a group of people who need to know this happened, and that group of people needs a new myth. The space we find ourselves in the world, in our country, in our very lives — it’s a very difficult one. We need a new myth, our old ones are lies to us now, and we know it, it’s obvious.

But why is it that we fail to accept that these old ideas are dying?

Because we haven’t gotten a new one yet …

Here is the first single from the new album.