Afrikaans Electro artists Die Heuwels Fantasties have just released their second studio album ‘Wilder as die Wildtuin’ and once again they don’t disappoint. A collection of 14 varied and musically powerful tracks takes the listener on a journey of the senses.
RAMfest Johannesburg: Meh
RAMfest’s introduction to Johannesburg last year rendered one of the best things to hit the Highveld’s music scene. Not so this year. I may as well have stayed home and watched the cricket.
We had a bit of an adventure getting there, missing William Nicol entirely and ending up in a pond on a random farm with stables next to the road. Worth it?
Not really.
Firstly, the sound was abysmal. Not the artists’ fault and something not new to South African festivals. The venue is horrible – one would think that after the Coke Fest 2009 disaster, organisers would know better than to host another concert at Riversands Farm.
(more…)
Saturday night at the Assembly saw Rocking the Daisies throw their final rock and roll hurrah for 2010. An awesome lineup to celebrate an awesome lineup.
The evening started off with the up and coming Jakkals. I last saw them about 2 months ago at one of their first gigs, and I must say I was more than pleasantly surprised buy how much they have come along as a band. They are much tighter and more relaxed on stage. This spilled over nicely onto the audience who seemed to enjoy their melodic folk-rock show almost as much as the band enjoyed putting it on. The crowd was nicely warmed up and ready for the new darlings of the Cape Town music scene: Holiday Murray.
Holiday Murray have been busy boys, playing at Rocking the Daisies, Greenpop’s ‘Cool as Folk’ party hosted by the Assembly, and now the Rocking the Daisies After Party. As expected, they put on a slick, crowd-pleasing show. The simple individual instrumental parts blending together into elegant arrangements, carried by understated vocal harmonies.
The Pinkertons were up next, a blues-rock ensemble driven by husky female vocals. Normally a recipe for awesomeness, but unfortunately The Pinkertons fall a little short of impressing… it’s the vocals as opposed to the vocalist that lets them down though. It feels as if the songs are being played with only the backing vocals instead of the lead vocal parts. As a result, the songs feel incomplete, and just a little bit repetitive. You get the feeling that this band could be awesome if their singer (who has a fantastic voice) would just grab the vocal melodies and lyrics by the throat, they would do the same to their audience. However, rumor has it that The Pinkertons are taking a trip to splitsville, so our hopes for them to mature into something awesome will never happen.
Now to the alarming highlight of the evening:
We Set Sail are an instrumental ensemble in the ilk of the Bell Orchestra (there you go, an obscure reference for you). It’s an unusual night when the headlining act is an instrumental band, and a pretty special occasion when they knock the socks off everybody in the room. Despite talking about the rugby between songs, we set sail shook the foundations with their elegant and textured arrangements. If you get a chance, go and see these guys.
Thank you to Rocking the Daisies for throwing a great after party, the free entrance thing was a pretty cool bonus, and on a personal note, happy birthday to Patrick of We Set Sail and Jakkals, you threw a fantastic incidental party.
So Rocking the Daisies happened again out in darling. A dusty, wet, boiling hot, freezing cold weekend of filthy rock and roll music festival.
This year I felt the lineup was much better. Friday night belonged to The Dirty Skirts and international electro pop rockers New Young Pony Club, and Saturday night being a late Nineties high school rock and roll wet dream with BOO! and Springbok Nude Girls, followed by a rocking Taxi Violence. The Red Bull Tent was pulsating with base till early in the morning with an apparently excellent lineup (I’m not much of a dancer), and the comedy tent was, well, the comedy tent, a good place to take a break, sit and laugh. This year though, there was a new stage: The World Music Barn, which was fantastic, with acoustic acts and extra bands, followed up by late night DJ’s.
The crowd was apparently bigger this year, with an expected 12 000+ people expected by Saturday Night. This surprised the hell out of me, considering the R100 odd Rand ticket price hike, but either way, the festival felt bigger and better than last year. That being said, it really felt like the organizers were looking to make more money at every corner.
A new‘sustainable initiative’ was that you could buy a Rocking the Daisies environmentally friendly water bottle for R35 and then fill it up at ‘Re-hydration Stations’ with filtered clean water for free. This seemed like a good idea on the surface, but part of the deal was that you could supposedly walk around with whatever you felt like drinking in your ‘sustainable’ bottle.
This turned out not to be the case however, as people from the general campsite were stopped from entering the stage area with their own alcohol, regardless of it’s brand or container. This felt like nothing more than a pile of bullshit to me. The tickets were, if not exorbitant, then very pricy, the food area felt like a visit to the biscuit mill, which is all well and good, but you couldn’t get a hotdog for less than R30, and on top of that, you can’t even drink your own vodka mix in the overpriced bottle they made you buy. The whole weekend thus felt like an expensive exercise in marketing strategy as opposed to an environmentally responsible music festival.
That being said, it was a rock and roll spinning out of control drunk twisted bender of a weekend. I had a fantastic time, I just felt like I got kicked in the financial kidneys.
maar ek glo glad nie in sprokies nie...
Produced locally. By a drummer. No, really. You have to ask yourself: “how good can it sound if a band member produces an album?” And the drummer of all people..!
Well, mr van Pletzen is certainly not a deaf drummer I tell you. And not really part of VCK. But he drummed for them on their 3rd album and did the post-production too on-top of his producing duties. What makes this album interesting is the fact that not all the songs sound the same. If you thought it’s all going to be skop, skiet & donner (like I did) you are in for a nice surprise. The album kicks off with what feels like the next step in VCK’s sound: good ol’ fashioned drums and guitar, with an added edge of synths. ‘Voor ons stof word’ is set to become one of those tunes which will remind you of what you were doing in 2010. However, the following track ‘Ondier Kom!’ shows true rocknroller spirit – the kind of song that makes me wish I could mix them live on the biggest baddest sound system out there. Third off is ‘Huissiek Gebede’ after which you are led onto a path of a different flavour.
This is where things get interesting. Now you get taken on a journey reaching as far back as the mid 70′s, paying homage to dancing girls to JJ Cale to Koos du Plessis. And a healthy dose of original work. It is fair to say VCK’s interpretation of said artists are quite unique and puts a fresh spin on these classic numbers. The most intriguing for me is ‘Skadu’s teen die muur’ done with a mix of newly programmed beats and an acoustic six-string, the way it was done before.
More originals with hard-hitting lyrics, especially ‘Die laaste Sondag’, show that there is no end to the creative talents of this band. This is by no means just another rock album, it is a fresh approach to a winning recipe: have rock guitars, have kicking drums, add some subtle electronic wizzardry and viola! Yes, well this is not re-inventing the wheel as such – we have heard rock bands go electro before, these guys did it with taste. But hey, that’s my opinion! Sample this album, you might just be converted..
Out in the middle of the South African bosveld, renowned for ‘all that dust’ that gets mentioned every year in some news paper article or status update, one of the country’s oldest music festival kicked off its 16th year. And this one was the winner, at least as attendance is concerned, with tickets selling out for the first time since the music gatherings inception in that glory year of our Rainbow Nation in 1994. The fables and fibs have been reminisced over the years, regaling the ‘greats of yesteryear’ and how they laid the foundation for the next generation. But while sponsors, bands, fame, turn-over, exposure and attention grew in leaps and bounds, some things remained firmly rooted the thinking of the 90’s – right here, right now, me, us, celebrate.
I’m sorry to disappoint if you hoped this was going to be one of those glamorous, ass-kissing, all-adoring, no-frills article, rehashing drunken flashes from the stages to the bar-counter. Everyone knew before hand that the line-up rather average and that Billy Talent is SO 8 years ago. Entertainment wise, winners at Oppikoppi 2010 were Taxi Violence, Die Tuintwergies, Culoe da Song, Corne en Twakkie, PH-fat, Terminatryx, Haezer, New Holland and BLK JKS. Lowlights were dominated by every band with a double kick-drum, the bonehead that goes by the name of Captain Beer and the electro-dance floor being on an incline. But these are things you can deal with, because, well, it’s a festival out in the bush and its Gauteng – okes do things different up there compared to the Cape.
from above
Die Tuindwergies, Taxi Violence, Wrestlerish with Richard
from Isochronous for a Studio1 live recording
Perhaps that is just it – a festival, a gathering of like-minded people, is reflective of the tuft of society to which it accommodates. The Gauteng area, Jhb and Pta in particular, is comprised of bustling city-scapes where people are packed on top of each other; grotesque adverts are force-fed into your visual space across behemoth billboards selling everything from insurance to God; there is a constant thick smog that permeates across the skyline and no-one seems to pause for just a moment, to stop to think before charging fuck-forth forward like a raging bull who has just been seared with a white-hot branding-iron titled ‘consume!’.
I’ve realized that the people of the Western Cape are spoiled when it comes to music spectacles. Thanks to the forward thinkers behind festivals like Rocking the Daisies, AfrikaBurn, RAMfest, Vortex and Synergy, festival goers have been graced by the fresh music, comfortable and spacious and planned camping areas, but most importantly – a clean, maintained and eco-conscious festival! Don’t get me wrong, I can handle days on end with no shower and muddy/dusty/rainy conditions, bring it on. The thing is, I can’t handle litter, especially litter at a festival. The pristine green grass lawn that we arrived to at Koppi on Friday was by Saturday dotted with cups, bottles, cans and food containers – no pretty sight. Over and above the mark left by the festival-goer, it appears Oppikoppi made no efforts to keep their own carbon footprint minimum, and by doing nothing in that regard, failed to use their massive platform and reach to positively influence the masses.
Before you scoff at this notion and pass me off for another ‘Cape tree-hugging greenie’ (if you did, thank you kindly) look abroad at the front-runners of music festivals. Every year the Glastonbury Festival in the UK employs a 1,200-strong contingent who up to 2,000 tons of solid waste that festival-goers generate over the course of the event. . The recycling of cans, plates, cups, plastics and food waste produced by 140,000 revelers begins at the outset of the festival, in the last weekend of June, but the complete clean-up of the festival site can take until August. California’s Coachella Fest provides a service to those who need to charge their cellphones with charging stations powered by bicycles and solar panels. And right here in South Africa, just outside sunny and flowery Darling, Rocking the Daisies provides ample bins for waste and recycling, encourages car-pooling and provides half-price tickets to those who cycle to the festival.
The fact of the matter is that right here, right now, things actually need to evolve, develop and improve. Yes, Koppi sold-out the tickets this year – success! Yes, Koppi was rated as one of the top international festivals outside of the USA/UK scene – triumph! But unfortunately, Koppi failed to climb onto the most important bandwagon of them all – eco-conscious and sustainable festival planning.
Here’s to next year and high hopes.
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all photos © Rock ‘n Roller | photography by mark reitz
The most riviting performance by The Makabra Ensemble performing an instrumental soundtrack to the 1925 Italian film 'Maciste In Hell'
The Red Bull Electro Stage, Friday Night
CellC provided lockers to charge your cellphone in safety while you carried on partying. Great idea, but that sun beat down everyday asking to be tapped into.
This hill climb to the electro-bar provided for much laughter the later the night progressed
Dude stoking out to Haezer
In the previous post I told you about Arno Carstens’ fantastic gig at this awesome little venue, the Fugard.
Well, unfortunately I didn’t take my camera with me and therefore I had to make do with some ripped pics.
Thankfully Melanie Carstens deemed it necessary to rectify my sad situation and sent me some pics of the evening.
Behold, a legend in action!
Here is cool group photo of Arno and some of his famous friends.
Here is another review of Arno’s Wonderful Wild Tour including a video of one of his new songs, "Emergency".
You can follow Arno at www.twitter.com/arnocarstens
Thanks Melanie for this!
» Mars
On Wednesday night we were fortunate enough to witness a live performance from one of South Africa’s most revered vocalists, Arno Carstens, who is back home from London for a quick tour to support the release of his UK debut album, Wonderful Wild.
He was joined on stage by fellow musicians Kevin Leicher (Plum) on lead guitar, Warren Leicher (Plum) on bass guitar, ex-Battery 9 guitarist, Arnaud van Vliet (guitar), Jerome Reynard (OHM & Nine) on drums and the legendary Brendan Jury (Urban Creep & Transky) on strings and keyboard.
The new album’s material was written, recorded and mixed in London & Spain with co-songwriting contributions from Giles Martin, James Walsh, Jim Duguid and Youth. The album was produced by legendary British producer Youth (The Verve’s Urban Hymns) and Jim Duguid (Paulo Nutini’s These Streets). Final mix on the album is by Tim Bran (The Verve’s recent UK#1 album).
The Fugard Theatre was the perfect venue to showcase Arno’s new material. It had its beginnings as The Congregational Church in Buitenkant Street which was built in 1830 and in 1860 the church hall was added to the rear of the church. In 1906 the original church was demolished to make way for the building of warehouse space but the church hall has remained to be incorporated into the Sacks Futeran warehouse development. It has recently been revamped into what will most assuredly become one of the top spots in Cape Town for evening entertainment.
The Bar
The old Church hall
The view from the stage
Back to the music – As expected, most of the songs were from the new album and from the outset it was clear that Arno has yet again managed to compose soulful, mature music that remains accessible and true to his rocknroll heritage.
Like most of the audience, I was not familiar with any of the songs from his new album which prevented us from singing along. He did however play all the favorites from his previous albums – Another Universe, Blue Eyes, Hole Heart, and a very different solo acoustic version on Bubblegum On My Boots, which is exactly the sort of pleasures one is privy to when you go and see a live performance.
After the show I immediately bought the new CD and I have to say that the live versions rocked a little harder than their CD encased cousins. Therefore I urge you to go out there and experience Arno Carstens as he should be – on stage, surrounded by talented musicians who likes nothing better than to bring the house down in an avalanche of rocknroll.
We arrived at Assembly just in time for the start of She Man Lion’s performance. I haven’t had an opportunity to see them performing live yet and I was looking forward to seeing what the band who won the Red Bull RADAR competition at Rocking the Daisies would dish up.
My first thoughts were that these guys sounded allot like Joy Division and The Smiths, but with a healthy dose of scintillating, tight frenetic synth sounds and driving baselines thrown in to produce a wall of sound that grabs you and hurtles you down a very enjoyable electro-rock journey. The lead singer, Graham, clearly enjoyed himself and displayed a surprising amount of onstage confidence and presence. He had the crowd seduced with his engaging performance although I must admit that there were many times that I wished that his voice would be stronger, with more of an edge, to match the wall of sound that the band produced.
Towards the end of the set however, Graham, seemed to crank it up a notch, and everything came together which ultimately left me with only one impression… These guys are good! Their music is dripping with intelligence and creativity and they clearly are not afraid to experiment with new sounds. Graham asked the crowd a couple of times that he wanted us to feel the music. I can assure you that I had no problem feeling their music.
LARK
The call of the Lark sounded and their faithful followers gathered in large numbers to be treated to a live performance so awesome that everyone was left in a state of bliss-filled rocknroll enlightenment for the next 4 hours.
Lark is the real deal. Their music is on an entirely different level all together. Their music hits you a freakin Tsunami! It is powerful stuff indeed. Inge Inge Beckmann’s vocal range and stage performance is like a vortex that sucks the entire club’s attention towards one point while the rest of the band produces a sound so pure and hard-core that you are left with no choice but to believe that there can be no better place to be than right there in front of their stage.
My favorite track of the evening, Vampire, which represents a slight departure from their normal sound, with an extremely addictive baseline that got everyone bopping and swaying, somehow never got chosen for any of their previous albums. Thank goodness they were selling it at the door as a single and I had no problem handing over my sixty rands for the chance to own this treasure.
Many thanks go to Tatyana Silberman for these great photo’s.
» Mars
I woke up early Saturday morning (early enough to see the sun finish rising) and was impressed to see one of my friends come stumbling in – drenched – straight from the electro tent.
Still feeling a little groggy I went about making myself a breakfast of cereal and long life milk. Whilst attempting to eat this sloppy concoction I saw the same friend whip out a gas stove and cook up a full on eggs and bacon breakfast (what was I doing wrong).
Off it was to the river for an early morning swim. Feeling refreshed we went back to the camp and lazed around for and hour or two waiting for the first act of the day Jack Parow.
Jack Parow was such a jol. He just sums up that Northern suburbs culture so well and has a huge following – everyone was singing along “jy het ‘n tattoo van a slang op jou tiete”. And obviously he wore his famous foot long cap.
Straight after Jack were the air guitar championships. These were really rocking. It ended up with a final: some guy in a full on Darth Vader costume who called himself Darth Metal and played a shredder version of the Star Wars theme song, and another who called himself McBraaiver (because he likes McGayver and braais – how brilliant) and he played a punkish song (something about never killing the Metal, although it was a punk song so I did no really get it?) that aside McBraaiver was very good – he had all the moves: powersliding across the stage, playing his air guitar behind his head. It payed off because he ended up winning. But my favourite by far was the guy who attempted acoustic air guitar.
By this point it was absolutely baking. So it was off to the river again. I spent the next hour in the water. On the way back I stopped for some durnkpunk Halfprice, but was already dry (the river is only 200m from the main stage!) it was just too hot to go crazy. So found a spot of shad and chilled for the next couple of hours.
The next on my list of must sees was The Sleepers and they did not disappoint. I really think that there aren’t enough of these alternative, progressive kinds of bands in South Africa so it was really great to see/hear one. They ended the set spectacularly. The singer left the stage leaving the three guitarists (one bassist) on stage. One by one the guitarist started playing their instruments with violin bows which created this really eerie, somber sound.
Desmond & the Tutus are and awesome band. They have such a contagious energy about them that really rubs off on the crowd. Their kind of garage sound gets everyone jumping. A great performance by them.
Die Heuwels Fantasties, of which two of the members are also in Fokofpolisiekar, have a lighter sound than Polisiekar. They also have gone more of an electronic route – in one of their songs Jack Parow raps with them. So over all they do not compare to Fokof in terms of rock n rollness.
Die heuwels fantasties feat. Jack Parrow
Next up was my personal high light – Lark. It must be said: Inge Beckmann has an astounding voice. Although it may not be true good old fashioned rock n roll because of their electro element, they are still put on a show. When you look up at the stage you see a silhouette a monster man, playing the electric bass, with his giant mane of hair shaking and a thousand different coloured light behind him it leaves you awestruck.
Boo! Are back after a 7 year wait. Not knowing anything about Boo! Chris Chameleon creeped me out a little. His insane vocal range did not help my dilemma…
Pendulum was a massive let down. Their vocals seemed to consist mainly of “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, lets go, Yeah.” At one point he even called us Jo’burg!
» Zack
