The sage-like South African music writer and former host of the ‘Roots to Fruits’ radio show, Richard Haslop, has announced his top 50 albums for 2008, and Ella Joyce Buckley’s ‘For Astraea’ is on it. Also, along with Jim Neversink’s ‘Shakey is Good’, it’s the only South African album on the list.

The list will be published in the June/July issues of Audio Video Magazine, but the entry on ‘For Astraea’ can be viewed here in the meantime.

Congratulations to Ella, and Jim for that matter.

For the sake of online sales, i’ve registered with the south african pay site SETCOM, which will hopefully prove to be a useful step towards gearing this site for convenient online sales. My shop section can be accessed here, needless to say i will be working toward making online sales as convenient and self-explanatory as possible. Please don’t hesitate to offer any suggestions in this regard.

It is by now almost a tradition on my side that February is a month that brings many developments and plans to the fore. The most immediate one is the 4th Cape Town instalment of On The Edge of Wrong (the festival also had its first Oslo outing in 2008) , set to take place on the 28th of Feb and 1st of March, again at the Intimate Theatre on Hiddingh Campus. This festival, the initiative of Norwegian guitarist Morten Minothi Kristiansen, aims to present musicians who work at the cutting edge of various disciplines, ranging from jazz to classical to electronic music. Some funding from the Norwegian Jazz Forum and MMINO, a South African-Norwegian Music Exchange body, allows us to present more artists from abroad who are really pushing boundaries. Anyone who witnessed Streifenjunko‘s performance at the 2008 instalment of the festival will testify that the alien sounds the duo conjured out of their horns was a mindfuck of previously unknown proportions.

Clips from their, and other, performances at the festival, shot by Australian electronica artist Andrew Garton, can be viewed here.

The lineup for the 2009 instalment currently looks as follows:

Saturday 28.Feb:

Shane Cooper & Chris Engel

Thundersqueak

Øystein Skar (NO)

“Sonic Duets” feat. Carlo Mombelli & Marcus Wyatt

Sunday 1.March:

Ivan Mazuze, Texito Langa & Gorm Helfjord

The Brydon Bolton Trio

Omenås/Skarbø (NO)

Kyle Shepherd

Tickets are R70 per night (R50 per night for students) OR you can buy a full festival pass for both nights for R120 (R100 for students). Performances will start precisely at 20:00 (please note that the doors will be closed once the performances have commenced) – doors open at 19:00, and there is a cash bar and a lovely outside area to socialize at the Intimate Theatre.

On the label side of things, the major development is that I am currently looking at an April/May launch of my album, and also that Ramon Galvan, who features prominently on it, is also busy wrapping up his own, and that we are looking at launching the two albums simultaneously as well as doing a series of concurrent gigs to promote them.

Ramon Galvan- No Rest

The Buckfever Underground live album, “Limbs Gone Batty: The Role of the Anterior-Posterior Patterning Signal, Sonic Hedgehog, in the Development of the Unique Bat Limb” will also become available during the course of February. The album, which takes its strange title from bassist Gil’s sister Dorit Hockman’s master’s thesis, was recorded at the Independent Armchair Theatre in May 2007, at a gig in which the band’s usually incongruent meanderings gelled into unusually apposite songforms: ‘Letter to the Lonely One’ finds Toast Coetzer’s faltering singing echo Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and builds to an almost orchestral climax (inasmuch as one guitar, bass and drums can be said to approximate ‘orchestral’), while ‘The Curator’ follows a love-as-cannibalism metaphor along a snakelike motif into an eventual feedback morass.
At this point it should also be announced that i have left The Buckfever Underground, owing to other commitments, but that i hope to still work with Toast’s magnificent lyrics in other projects.

The Buckfever Underground – I’ve Joined Facebook, Now What?

Another major development is that i am working in conjunction with Paul Riekert of the One F label, JHB gallerist Warren Siebrits and Marcel Van Heerden, at the previously much hinted at CD reissue of the band KOOS’ 1989 self-titled cassette album. Truly a landmark South African album in my opinion, KOOS were as politicised as many of their peers, but were the only band to really convey the turbulence of those times sonically: as Marcel recalls today, they were making music like what they had imagined punk to sound like. The reissue will be launched at Warren Siebrits’ gallery in Johannesburg on the 18th of March.

KOOS: (l-r) Kendell Geers, Neil Goedhals, Megan Kruskal, Marcel Van Heerden, Gys De Villiers, Velile Nxazonke. Photo by Wayne Oosthuizen

KOOS – Sloper

And then, as promised, here is an mp3 of Ella Joyce Buckley’s great new track ‘Terroir Knot’, for the upcoming Babel Gyve album.

Ella Joyce Buckley -Terroir Knot

Much to take in!

Tracklisting:

1. The Majesty of Violet Sky
2. Lotus Lake
3. The Birds
4. Under the Wild whats
5. Parhelion
6. Harlequin Jack
7. Wanderlust

The agenda of the blog is still very much the same – to post mp3′s of interesting music that might pass under the radar otherwise, to update on the activities of the label and related events such as the upoming ‘On The Edge of Wrong’ festival, to post the occasional illustration and screenprint, and to wax lyrical about any amazing album or gig that comes our way.

Jaunted Haunts Press, the record label, originated out of a desire to formalise the output of the cd-r label named (somewhat obtusely, admittedly) \/#/. So we have given it a pronouncable name, and also decided to press CD’s, for distribution purposes.

The first pressing, a second, pressed up edition of Ella Joyce Buckley’s “For Astraea”, is, for all practical purposes, finished, and will be available shortly.

Meanwhile Ella has been working on an amazing new body of work entitled ‘Babel Gyve’, which will be available further down the line. ‘Babel Gyve’ is mostly guitar-based, and can only be described as gritty, atmospheric and heart- rendingly gorgeous. Check out the demo of ‘Mazarine’ for a taster of what’s to come.

Ella Joyce Buckley – ‘Mazarine’ (demo)

The second release, which will see the light during the course of November, is a live album by The Buckfever Underground, entitled ‘Limbs Gone Batty…’, which was recorded at the Independent Armchair Theatre in May 2007, and captures the band in all its shambolic yet inspired glory.

The Buckfever Underground  – “I’ve Joined Facebook, Now What?”

A second edition of Ampersand’s ‘This is not a Drill’ is also imminent.

Progress on my own album with Dirk Hugo has been slow but steady, and the cast of collaborators has grown to include Ella Joyce Buckley, Ramon Da Silva, Brydon Bolton, Waldo Alexander, Jeanette Claassen, Martin Jacklin, Toast Coetzer, Gareth Dawson and Mark Van Niekerk.

I’ve been doing rehearsals with my personal favourite drummer ever, Ross Campbell (of Urban Creep, Fetish and Benguela) and we will be going into the studio to record drums next week (which is going to sound incredible and will tie a lot of things together). It is an honour and an absolute joy to work with the musician who is also responsible for the mindblowing drums on this:

Ramon Galvan – “No Rest”

At the moment, the solo acoustic track ‘August’ is still the only track complete enough for a preview, but i can already safely say that there are a few surprises in store. I am presently hoping to release this around April next year.

Righard Kapp – “August”

That is all for now. I solemnly vow to post more frequently, and also to have other contributors post more frequently.

Amen