[1] He grew up in the Cowies Hill area of Durban, attending Westville High School where he played in school-based groups doing covers of songs by Jimi Hendrix and The Who.

[4] In 1976 he was conscripted into the South African Defence Force, where he declared himself a Hindu pacifist, and was assigned to medical duties and then to band work.

[5] The Surfers' music was the first radical white anti-apartheid pop in South Africa,[8] and began with a 1982 home-recorded cassette titled "Gross National Products".

[15] The Sunday Times called it "a music born from the spilled seed of our national sickness and nurtured to nightmarehood in the moral drought of daily life/politics".

[17] Jon Savage wrote in the New Statesman that it was a "success", praised its "viciously critical (and historically intelligent) lyrics", and compared it with early Zappa.

[19] The third album, Sleep Armed (1987), has been called "the best snapshot we have of South Africa at the time, right down to the jacket photo of rich surfers on Umhlanga Roxx, a posh White beach in Durban".

[3] In 1986, with a live band comprising Mick Hobbs on bass, Alig (from Family Fodder) on keyboards, Tim Hodgkinson (keyboards, sax and slide guitar), and Chris Cutler on drums,[2] Sony performed in the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, the Festival des Politischen Liedes in East Berlin, and London.

[20] In 1989 the South African authorities banned the fourth album Bigger Than Jesus,[21] due to concerns about the song "Gutted with the Glory"' and the use of the Lord's Prayer.

[26] Sony worked as a sound recordist (for many foreign networks including ABC, CBS, BBC ) covering the defiance campaign and consequently the release from prison of Nelson Mandela in February 1990.

[13] Sony worked with Lloyd Ross at Shifty Records from 1992, mostly concentrating on developing and promoting foreign African music in South Africa.

Akasic Record[31] (2001) is "a highly sophisticated foray into African-flavoured dubfunk";[32] Muti Media (2003) features a sculpture by Brett Murray on the cover, and Zukile Malahlana from Marekta appears on the album.

One Party State (2010) was released on Microdot and debuted at the African Soul Rebels Tour in the UK alongside Oumou Sangaré & Orchestre Poly-Rythmo De Cotonou.

[39] Agitprop explores Sony's fears about South Africa in the 2010s becoming a one party state under the African National Congress, and includes a song about chemical warfare scientist Wouter Basson.

[40] South African Rolling Stone compared it to the KLF, Sly and Robbie and Pink Floyd, and described its "slow evolution of nuance" towards the "desolately upbeat" "Hostile Takeover".

Under the name Trans-Sky, Sony produced Killing Time (CD) and Heaven To Touch (EP) with Brendan Jury, and toured South Africa opening for Massive Attack in 1998.

[44] In 1998 he worked on Turntabla, an electro-dub project with ex-Orb members Greg Hunter and Kris Weston,[45] and did the sound engineering for a workshop with Brian Eno in Cape Town.

[47] He was invited to present a performance for Unyazi: International Electronic Music Symposium at Wits University, Johannesburg in 2005,[48] and co-produced and arranged the album The Triptic (2007) for Polish metal band Sweet Noise.

[60] He has been involved in multimedia theatre productions such as William Kentridge's Ubu and the Truth Commission (with Brendan Jury)[61][62] and Faustus in Africa,[63] and Handspring Puppet's Tall Horse.

[65] He was based at Milestone Studios, Cape Town, and his advertising work included commissions from Nissan, Daewoo, Land Rover, and BMW.

[66] He left Milestone to concentrate on his master's degree which he completed with distinction, at Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town in 2019.

“Between Substance and Shadow: investigations into the cynanthropy of Gary the Dog” for This Mortal Body - As part of “Rethinking South African Literature(s)" out in late 2023 7.)

"Practices of Listening: Repercussions of Sound,Silences and Censorship from (Post)Apartheid South_Africa" (MFA Thesis, original title: Hit The Mute Button) [1] 8.)