Jaunted Haunts Press

Comments (0)

Back online.

You may have noticed that this site has been offline since Sunday – this has been due to a problem encountered in upgrading the WordPress platfom to the latest version (and stupidly not backing up the previous installation, because, what could possibly go wrong?) – anyway, it’s back online thanks in no small part to the expertees of Niel Thiart, (the same guy who built the booking system for the Newspace launch – Niel, you’re my hero) who managed to fix it up. As you can see, the design elements have fallen casualty to this SNAFU, which i think is as good an incentive for a pending redesign as any (although i must say that this Fauna theme is doing quite nicely). At least i didn’t delete the entire database this time.

In any case: since I last posted on this site, I have been working hard towards gearing myself for doing screenprints more regularly, and will be starting a separate blog around that fairly soon. I was also asked to write a review of The Wild Eyes’ gig two weeks ago, for Mahala.co.za, which you can read here.

I also did some rough demos of some new acoustic pieces, one of which you can hear here.

Ramon Galvan has also started his own blogspot, on which he posts lyrics from the ‘Outer Tumbolia’ and other interesting pieces about his processes. Be sure to check that out here.

Comments (4)

From the Vaults: Skrummasjien

Skrummasjien was a two-piece noise rock outfit consisting of myself on guitar and Mark Van Niekerk on drums. The central idea was to fixate on an almost comical heaviosity based on power chord riffs, thrash metal drumming and feedback, coupled with noise loops.We liked the idea of jumping from one idea to another in a hyperactive way, so the tracks were often 10 minute sections that consisted of 5 or 6 ideas in quick succession. We gigged VERY occasionally, opening for Throatball (Ian Watson’s awesome thrash metal band) on one occasion and Action Blueprint (Paul Opie’s project after Blackmilk), and then another one in the back room at EVOL, which we played in the middle of the room with no PA.

We recorded our jams pretty diligently, though often on very rudimentary equipment, and there is hours of this stuff – not all listenable. During a recent visit to Mark he drew my attention to this section that was better than i remember.

Skrummasjien – Mmmurks

Another ‘track’ that i personally love, even though the clipping on it is positively caustic, is one we’ve titled ‘Kepler (Vessels of God)’

Skrummasjien – Kepler (Vessels of God)

We also compiled a cd-r of live and practice recordings that was kind of the inaugural release on One Minute Trolley Dash (which i still have plenty of copies of by the way)

In the time of shitgaze getting serious cred, this stuff doesnt sound THAT preposterous – but be warned, it is lo-fi city we’re talking here!

Comments (8)

Two Great Guitar Albums pt.2: Andre v Rensburg,Nels Cline

It seems to be becoming a habit of mine to write about guitar albums – no surprise there – but also to tackle them in pairs. If you missed my previous lyrical waxing about Marc Ribot and Fred Frith, you can find it here.

Andre van Rensburg – Unfinished Cities

(South of the Border, 2008)

“When he was 6 years old, André van Rensburg strung a guitar string to a plank of wood, attached the other end to his bedroom window bars and yanked the string until it broke. His musical vision has changed little since…”. He has, however, cast a huge shadow in the history of South African leftfield music: his previous projects include the legendary rock trio Supernature (friends of mine from a gig-going generation before me go glassy-eyed when their name is brought up), Ohm (with Brendan Jury), a stint in Battery 9, and the alt-country project Die Menere (with Battery 9 mastermind and One F label boss Paul Riekert). Van Rensburg has since relocated to Taiwan, where he has been pursuing his interest in Eastern melodicism, Derek Bailey’s brittle tone as well as John Zorn’s compositional strategies.

‘Unfinished Cities’ is the second album to contain van Rensburg’s solo compositions, but it features contributions from, among others, violinist Brendan Jury and japanese Koto player Chieko Mori, who mainly provide thin, dissonant backdrops to van Rensburg’s plucky acoustic performances. The opening track ‘Unfinished Cities pt1″ is probably the most seductively melodic piece here, a beautifully winsome composition that nevertheless sets textural tone for the more challenging material that follows.

‘Unfinished Cities’ can be purchased from CDBaby here, and is available in South Africa from One F Music (drop Clair a mail via ‘General Enquiries’).

Andre van Rensburg’s official website is here.

Nels Cline – Coward

(Cryptogramophone, 2009)

Nels Cline is unfortunately best known for being the guitarist of Wilco: a band i’ve just always found too bland to bother with. Yet Cline has a slew of other, less commercially successful projects, in which he explores many other facets of the guitar; such as The Nels Cline Singers.I also remember hearing a track of him playing with saxophonist Paul Flaherty and (my favourite) drummer Chris Corsano, which was just about the most evil, unhinged wall of noise i’ve heard. From what i know, ‘Coward’ is his first solo album, which is quite odd given the length of his career so far but also understandable in the light of his propensity for collaboration.

One of the first things that strike you about ‘Coward’ is the sheer variety of approaches represented on the album: whether this is a good or bad thing depends on whether you are assessing it as a coherent listening experience or whether, like me, you take the breadth of scope to be an almost didactic indication of syntactic possibilities.

Another thing that hits you early on is the fact that Cline has his chops, in the traditional sense. Cline could, if he wanted to, be one of those guys in guitar shops showing off ridiculously complicated licks designed to intimidate prospective young guitarists. The fact that a cluster of later tracks are titled ‘Onan Suite’ might be a wry allusion to this. The lovely acoustic track ‘Prayer Wheel’ centres around a looped motif but plays around it with some impressive, and very effective note runs. The very next track, ‘Thurston County’, however, after cycling through some spidery dissonant arpeggios and glutinous pitch-bent notes, settles into an unabashedly dumbed down two-chord chug that is incredibly ebullient and just so damn good. This is territory that most virtuoso guitarists won’t venture into, but thankfully Cline does. Throughout the rest of the album Cline puts his virtuosity at the service of his compositions, especially on the monumental acoustic piece ‘Rod Poole’s Gradual Ascent to Heaven’, on which sparse motifs evolve slowly into a dissonant frenzy.

Later on in the album, more electronic sound sources and electric guitars come the fore: ‘Onan Suite: Seedcaster’, with it’s lo-fi electronic farts and squawks, sounded so out of character that i thought i’d started listening to a Black Dice album – that alone should be ample testament to how good it is.’Onan Suite: The Liberator’ is another jaunty riff-fest over a straightforward 4/4 drum machine pattern, after which droning closer ‘Cymbidium’ bookends this remarkable album beautifully.

This album is mandatory listening for anyone with an interest in the guitar and its place in future of music.

Read Nels Cline’s notes on ‘Coward’ here.

Comments (0)

Sticky Antlers – Blind Horse Video

Some lo-fi animated fun from Pretoria’s no-fi noiseniks Sticky Antlers.

Blind Horse (animated music video)

Comments (0)

Dual Album Launch Videos pt1

Some videoclips from the recent Newspace Theater performance – firstly from Ramon Galvan’s set – the gorgeous song ‘Salvo’.

The highlight of Ramon’s set was the closer ‘No Rest’, which featured an amazing free drumming performance by Ross Campbell and generally much noise.

Thanks to Jaco Minnaar for filming – I will upload more videos early next week.

Comments (1)

Pics from Righard Kapp and Ramon Galvan album launch

We’ve got some photos from Nic da Silva and his wife Lauren from the Dual Album launch, you can view the full album here.

Comments (0)

Delay in distributing two new albums

Due to an error at the pressing plant there is going to be a slight delay in getting the two new albums distributed into shops, keep watching this space for news on that.

The launch gig was a wonderful experience, thank you to everyone who contributed to the success of that, particularly The Newspace Theatre and Dirk Hugo for doing the sound. I’ll hopefully have photos and comments up soon.

Comments (0)

Two brand new albums out June 21st 2009!

_______________________________

It can finally be announced: on June the 21st, this press is issuing two new albums simultaneously. Ramon Galvan’s ‘Outer Tumbolia’ and Righard Kapp’s ‘Strung Like A Compound Eye’ are launched on this night at the Newspace Theatre in Long Street, Cape Town. You might want to check out these sample tracks before moving on to read the rest of this press release:

Righard Kapp – Strung Like A Compound Eye

Ramon Galvan – Trying to Tell (Summer House)

back, l-r: Ramon Galvan, Righard Kapp (musicians),front, l-r: Jemima, Ben (cats) photograph by Lauren Fowler

Ramon Galvan is the former vocalist and keyboard player from the avant-rock band blackmilk. He is a self taught guitarist, and uses a similarly experimental approach to other instruments – allowing his unfamiliarity with them to guide his approach to songwriting.

An intimate and delicate blend of arcane folk and bludgeoning menace, these are songs about a future that never arrived, a summer that ended, everyday worries and life long puzzles.Written mostly on guitar, the music is peppered with an array of collected instruments, field recordings and found objects.

His debut solo album, ‘Outer Tumbolia’ maps out a clear emotional geography of loss, longing and acceptance, which is both nostalgic and utopian. It features an incendiary collaboration with Benguela drummer Ross Campbell on its dramatic closer as well as a woozy guitar-loop based melding with Jaunted Haunts label boss and close co-conspirator Righard Kapp.

Live, the Galvan Trio is completed by Pierre Du Plessis on electric guitar and trumpet and Nic Dasilva on bass guitar and music box. Ramon Galvan plays electric guitar, kalimba and autoharp.

Ramon is an admirer of Kate Bush, Scott Walker, Nico and Talk Talk.

Tracklist:

1) Luft
2) Trying to Tell (Summer House)
3) Chang, You
4) Luminarc
5) This is how
6) I Will rise Up
7) Grade by Grade
8 ) You Flossed the Stars
9) The Rupture
10) No Rest

Righard Kapp has dwelled on the outskirts of the South African music scene for several years now: from his own ambient and noise experiments to his involvement with the ‘On the Edge of Wrong’ festival of improvised music to his sporadic tenure with literary oddballs The Buckfever Underground, not to mention his label’s activities of releasing albums by decidedly individualistic artists and his involvement in the recent reissue of the 80’s South African art-punk band KOOS, it is clear that the idiosyncratic guitarist values a critical and aesthetic discourse that is well removed from the mainstream.

“Strung Like A Compound Eye” is his first formal foray into the territory of acoustic guitar composition. Although his experimental leanings can’t help but creep in, they do so in a manner that is viscerally appealing and immediate. Kapp aims to channel his fringe syntax into something that makes sense to the most casual of listeners: a dillettante’s one minute trolley dash through these outskirts of musical expression he calls home.

Ultimately, “Strung Like a Compound Eye” is an argument for the broadening of aesthetic horizons in a time when variety, though technologically feasible, is remarkably absent from our prescribed media diets, and in a country that is falling over its own feet in order to come to terms with its own diverse cultural identity.

The album, engineered, co-produced and mixed by Dirk Hugo, features performances by Ramon Galvan, former KOOS frontman Marcel Van Heerden, The Buckfever Underground frontman Toast Coetzer, Lee Thompson and Christopher Engel of the jazz outfit Restless Natives, Benguela drummer Ross Campbell, The Wild Eyes bassist Gareth Dawson and Ella Joyce Buckley, among several others.

Tracklist:

1. August
2. Strung Like A Compound Eye
3. I’m Gonna Learn To Love Myself
4. Static Recollection 1
5. A Monument to Works
6. The Wedding Song
7. Bring Die Bande Nader
8. ‘n Dun Laken Vernuf
9. Static Recollection 2
10. Little Spies
11. Take Me Under your Wing For the Entire Holiday

The main launch gig takes place on Sunday the 21st of June at Newspace One, in Long Street in Cape Town, which will feaure performances by the Ramon Galvan Trio and Righard Kapp’s full live band consisting of Ramon Galvan (vocals, toys), Ross Campbell (drums), Pierre du Plessis (guitar), and Gareth Dawson (bass).

In order to facilitate seating reservations, we have set up a basic reservation system here. As seats are limited we recommend you book in advance.

The ticket price for the launch gigs are R40.A ticket with one of the albums will set you back R100, and a ticket with both albums will cost R150.

Comments (1)

‘For Astraea’ in Richard Haslop’s Top 50 albums of 2008

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.

Comments (1)

Limbs Gone Batty: The Buckfever Underground Live Album

My apologies for scant and slightly off-topic posting of late. No excuses, barring not having much to say.

It’s taken a bit longer than it should have, but i can finally announce that  the Buckfever Underground live album ‘Limbs Gone Batty’ is now available. Recorded one fine May night at the much missed Independent Armchair Theatre, it’s probably one of the most focused gigs we’ve had in terms of our meandering improvisations coalescing into something approaching recognizable songforms. The album is pressed up in a silkscreened sleeve in an edition of 250. Also, have a free mp3 of ‘The Curator’ on us: i personally think that being dismembered by your lover has never sounded this sexy.

Tracklisting:

1. Letter To The Lonely One
2. The Curator
3. The South African
4. I Saw What Warrick Sony Saw
5. I’m On Facebook, Now What?
6. Teen Maandag Is Ons Dood
7. AIDS Test
8. Die Volk Is In Die Kak
9. The Anterior-Posterior Patterning Signal

I may add at this point that i am investigating avenues for efficient and easy online sales through this site, i hope to have everything in place within the next few weeks, however, if you are desperate for a copy NOW, contact me and we can make an arrangement.