#38: Shoka Sunflower (GUSHER*)
This week we are joined by artist & founder of GUSHER*, Shoka Sunflower, who tells us more about his obsession with CDs, speckled eggs, ASMR videos, and more!
Shoka Sunflower is an artist from Johannesburg, South Africa. He makes stuff; mainly music for about 5 years now, with a couple projects under his belt (ECOSYSTEM_01 out now). He founded GUSHER* in 2020 & started fully developing in 2021/2022, with the help of bahbah, Dxnte, Seli and a much bigger team. He’s part of a couple secret bands with his bestie UNCLE, and just loves things.
We welcome him to The FRM Newsletter to share what he’s been into recently.
[NOTE to reader] — I'm going to ramble; also my birthday is soon so for potential gifts, look at this please!
💿 CDs
Anyone who knows me knows that this is probably the most obvious thing on my list. I LOVE CDs bro — like i spend insane amounts of money collecting shit I can download lol. I have this fear that one day, all digital platforms will implode. So I gotta collect as much physical shit as possible. Anywho — CDs, I really love having a physical version of the sounds that have had a genuine affect on my life. Like imagine you could sleep with your favourite album? I actually can bro; I kissed Sade last night. I don't know how the obsession started. I just know that I got a couple CDs from friends & family as gifts and then I just felt like I needed more. CDs > than Vinyl.
If anyone can send me Yeezus, Blonde and Cherry Bomb on CD — I'll love you and we can make out if you want that. One more thing: shameless self-promo, GUSHER* put a CD out for MEMORY DISK VOL.1 with amazing artists on it, including me, so get that on the website www.gusher.co.za — CDs are cool.
📒 Books/Mags
Again, the internet imploding thing. I think I haven't walked into enough cool bookshops to have an insanely fire book collection, but everytime I'm somewhere, I'm either looking for a CD spot or a book spot. And when I say book, I mean something with mostly pictures. I love images. Someone lived in a moment and it was captured. Really insane when you think about it. I'm looking at someone’s ideas, or a moment in their lives. That's Instagram. Okay quick tangent, imagine if Instagram froze right now and they put together a book of all the posts that have been posted in the past 10 years! Bro that would be for one a big ass book but also so fucking beautiful. Just people's moments and ideas and prolly some creepy shit but any who yeah; I'm always looking for something cool to look at. So if you reading this and wanna recommend spots — hit my DMs... Maybe we can date too... or just talk.
🥞 Sweet Food
I used to be a fat kid, so I have a very weird relationship with food and all dat — but recently I've been healing that shit and realising how much I LOVE food and more specifically, sweets... Bro... SWEETS. Ugh. I found happiness in a milkshake. Strawberry milkshake with everything. Lately, fucking pastries nigga? Oh my gosh, cakes and shit! Bro I wanna go to a bakery and just sit there and taste everything. Meet the owner, hug and we become besties. Man... I'm just thinking about all the fire desserts in the world right now. Ice-cream man. Every time I think about dates, I think ice-cream. I had this one ice cream with my mom and I was dying. Forgot the name though. I loooove cookies, Eetsummore is my fucking life. Speckled eggs bro! Skittles! Omg yeah I could go on...
📺 Television Shows
I used to, not hate, but not pay any attention to long form television. I loved movies because everything would happen in 2 hours. Still love film — but in like 2021, I started watching TV shows. ‘The End of the Fucking World’ is the first TV show I remember binging. Finished it in a day. And I was like "oh, I get it now". In 2021/2022, I watched ‘Breaking Bad’ and realised I wanted to make a TV show haha. I was always watching ‘Atlanta’ but I only became really passionate about it after season 2. Season 3 of ATL is the best. I can explain it but I'll be here forever. Late 2022, I was at my mom’s house and I just watched a bunch of TV. ‘The Sopranos’ is God-level TV; ‘Mr Robot’ is insane, ‘Normal People’ is a tight ass 1 season show — it broke my heart. Started ‘The Wire’ and Succesion’, watched ‘Barry’ and currently waiting for final season — but basically I love TV. I wanna create a TV show. I have an idea. It's been about 20 years and we haven't made a better TV show than Yizo Yizo in South Africa. I think we needa take more risk in television here. We’re still making shows about kids getting traumatised in school. Let's try something different. I disliked Blood & Water but I tried. Oh also, ‘BEEF’ — 10/10 television. ‘Swarm’ was also tight as fuuck.
🔞 Porn
Hahahahaha, dear editor — you don't have to keep this in. Just thought it'd be funny.
🎭 Chaos (in art)
Frank Ocean's Coachella set was amazing. Okay now that's out the way, I'm very drawn to chaotic times in an artists career. That time they decide to colour outside of the lines. Yeezus is my fave Ye record. That explains everything... to me at least. It just feels like the experimentation goes crazy in those times and I'm always all eyes and yes. That's why Season 3 ATL man...
👀 Weird corners of the internet
I have a secret meme page I get depressed on. Not much of a secret anymore lol but yeah I love funny weird scary corners of the Internet. There's this TV show called ‘The Rehearsal’ by Nathan Fielder that's ahhhh too good and weird and surreal. I'm attracted to the same things on the Internet and on YouTube. I try find things like that, or they find me, and I'm just in awe. My humour is also really fucked. I love memes and yeah... I have a homie Zemanuel who supplies me with a daily dose of weird shit on Instagram.
🔊 ASMR
I have a serious obsession with this stuff. It's not weird but it is. It used to be a "to fall asleep" thing. Now I just watch it and listen; I don't know if it's a relaxation thing or what but yeah. I have a YouTube playlist of like 400+ ASMR videos. Have a favourite asmrtist (linasmr — kinda inlove with her) but yeah man. My kinda guilty pleasure... not so much anymore. I just love getting tingles hahahahaha.
[NOTE to reader] — I could probably go on... so imma stop here. Season 2? Maybe…