Johannesburg-based Givan Lotz's new EP, Maw,has a subtle, feral quality. With skeletal guitars and synthesizers that crackle like broken leaves, it's the soundtrack to the scene in a movie when the character is being watched by something malevolent. This air of foreboding gives Lotz an edge. By creating pleasant music with burnt edges, Lotz in Maw conveys an unexpected air - Watchtower, for instance, sounds like the notebook of a stalker, an appropriate theme for the age of social surveillance.Maw is released on royal blue vinyl, and comes with a bonus download called Yaw. It's the follow up to the similarly ferocious Snarling -an exploration of ''obsession, loneliness, desire, paranoia, tragedy, sensuality and melancholia".Lotz's musical production creativity is matched by his forays into sculpture and drawing.His series of artworks, Feral Futures, extends his fascination with nature into the visual realm, creating a post-apocalyptic pastoral, a romantic dream of what he describes as ''re-wilding both the landscape and humankind".It's an interest in death, decay and renewal.''I'm an artist because I'm uncertain," he says. ''My art objects are the results of a philosophical inquiry, critical thinking about what it means to be human. In my obsessive art-making, I aspire to achieve a catharsis." - bubblegumclub.co.zaFind Lotz's music at givanlotz.com..