Secession Update / 26 Feb 2008
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Secession Update / 26 Feb 2008, Kalk Bay, Cape Town
Contemporary Australian music, sound and visuals
As I'm writing our first update for 2008, Secession's 10th year, I'm listening to the festive sounds of Kaapse Klopse, a kind of music indigenous to Cape Town, and generally performed during what is locally known as the Coon Carnival. Rolling drums include a snare, bass and toms. Trombones and other horns play the melodies.
The rhythms are of a typical African nature, but if you can imagine, quite a few drum rolls accentuated by a bass drum struck from either side with mallets.
The band is playing on one of the two piers on Kalk Bay and the few swimmers on the nearby beach are dancing and yelping from the shallow water. Seals twist and turn up near the fishing boats which seem entirely remarkable to be floating at all!
I've been in Cape Town for just on two weeks with at least another one to go. I've had the good fortune to see the Restless Natives play at one of the more famed of venues, The Armchair Theatre, (see the review below) and meet one of the founding members of the infamous local bands, Bengula. Our first podcast for 2008 features an interview with Alex Bozas.
Andrew Garton
Contents |
releases / Son of Science out in April
If you've been waiting for this as long as I have you'll be thrilled and delighted and thoroughly stoked to know that my Son of Science album will be pressed and ready for sale in April of this year!
Thanks to Andrew Thomas for finessing the artwork (we went through quite a few variations and packaging options) and the good people at Dual Plover, this opus will be out and in the open.
I'll be back in Melbourne mid-March to arrange a launch, hopefully with a solid distribution deal in tow. For a preview of what's to come, lob on over to the wiki:
http://wiki.secession-records.org/index.php?title=SR008
releases / Secession compilation
Following, not too far behind our 8th release will be SR010, a Secession artists compilation that Ollie Olsen's been encouraging me to put out.
Details regarding this release will be published on the wiki as the project evolves.
http://wiki.secession-records.org/index.php?title=SR009
news / Secession wiki
It's clear that producing music, packaging and distributing it has and still is changing. To help us get to grips with what we're doing, how to improve it and overall ensure we remain sustainable, affordable and productive, we've set up a wiki where these kinds of issues, ideas and entire processes within the label will be publicly discussed.
http://wiki.secession-records.org/
In the first instance, I'm personally keen to see the label adopt an open business model as is being developed by our parent company, apc.au Ltd.
http://wiki.apc.org.au/index.php?title=Strategic_Plan
This wiki isn't for everyone. If you're interested in what we're doing, sign up, or if you're working with us on packaging, design, web sites, events, you'll want to use it. Otherwise, turn off your computer, go outside and find some fresh air to fill your lungs with. Maybe even stretch your back or go for a walk.
news / Secession storage meltdown
Late January I drove out to where our all our stuff has been stored to grab what's left of our stock. The storage facility is a good hours drive from the east side of Melbourne which makes it quite cheap. Around AUD$110/month.
Having found the place I was surprised to find that everything was stored in a shipping container. It was jam packed with studio equipment, master tapes and videos, office materials, furniture, a refrigerator and the best wok this side of Kuching... The container idea was just fine, the fact that it was out in the car park under the blazing sun wasn't! They'd run out of room inside the warehouse!
As I was coming to terms with the horror of heat and magnetic tape our storage provider discovered the key to the container didn't work. It had my name on it, but it was the wrong key. The only way in? Guess... an oxyacetylene torch! And this was going to take another day or so to organise!
I was stunned! Not only couldn't I get in, the heat would've destroyed all our DAT masters, or damaged them at best! And my precious old synthesizers will have fried their circuit boards... and on top of that, I was leaving the country the following evening!
I left quite debilitated, some what depressed and anxious... worse still I had no stock to take with me nor any to fill outstanding orders!
On top of all that I'd planned to leave with fresh copies of our latest release, but we had some last minute changes to make to the artwork to meet our printers specifications. So no new stock for stores in South Africa and festival organisers, no old stock for our customers and a blight on the start of Secession's 10 year!
So now I'm sitting in an office I'm sharing in Kalk Bay, Cape Town, knowing that it won't be till mid-late March before any of this will be sorted. In the meantime, I'm told the Melbourne summer has sustained the ferocity in which it had commenced in.
review / The relentless Restless Natives
I may be destined to conduct most my conversations about music with taxi drivers in Cape Town. Not only has every driver I've met come from a traditional music background, they ask questions! There are few musicians I've met in Cape Town that have inquired about my own work. Once I'm gone, and if they're curious, they may find a fraternity of taxi drivers who have some insight to a swag of my interests, work practices and humble achievements.
That aside, I want to spend the rest of these moments we have together to share with you my experience of the South African free jazz group, Restless Natives. I had it on good authority that their performance at the Armchair Theatre in Observatory, Cape Town, on the night of the 21st of Feb, was not to be missed and I can assure you, would not be forgotten!
The Armchair Theatre is a rather informal venue with little seating, but plenty of floor space for squatting and a foosball table that got a fair bit of use. I was advised by the bar staff that the band would start at 10. I'd been in Observatory since 6, so by 9:55 I was pretty eager to have my ears done in. The conversation around me was stifling to say the least.
Sure enough, at 10pm, the Restless Natives took to the stage and got stuck into the business of being restless and relentless from start to finish. It was exhilarating!
Chris Engle, sporting an afro, spat, spluttered, blew his sax like the roaring 40s! Then he'd bury himself in his instrument, hunched over it, furiously pumped like a bush-fire out of control... He played his baritone as hard and as emphatic as his mainstay, the alto. I'm told a new addition to the group, he sounded as if he'd been a part of the action for a good many years. Certainly essential to the overall vitality of this raw, effusive sound I was copping!
Lee Thomson on trumpet, swapping from cornet to flugel, was rather reminiscent of the great Miles, in terms of the tone and technique he employed, clear to me that through all this he was charting his own map, his own voice through these now familiar techniques. Entirely individual none-the-less. Certainly far more engaging than one or two of the brass players that marched in and out of Sydney's Freeboppers in the mid-1980's.
Shane Cooper, the double-bass player, who incidentally wrote much of this evening's tunes, and despite the dread-locks that tended to dominate rather than his playing at first, displayed an outstanding range of skills, temperament and taste for such a young player. His playing was invigorating... he would walk you through a garden of the most astonishing display of colour and texture and then race you dizzy through the crazed streets of Dhaka – from tulips to rickshaw! And was that a drum-stick he was using as a kind of bow or mallet?
The pianist, Jason Reolon, considered one of the best of a new crop of musicians in the country, his voice snaked upward and through me shimmering in the last three pieces; Eclipse (a piece by the drummer, Kesivan Naidoo, and somewhat reminiscent of Night in Tunisia), Prodigal Son and the final piece performed for the encore. In the latter I found myself literally swimming in his rich and complex melodies and syncopated chord shifts... they were indeed gorgeous moments.
Finally, but not least, the amazing and much respected Kesivan Naidoo. Despite the expertise displayed by everyone else on stage, it was Naidoo who held the entire performance together by providing with that extra power that comes from someone who just drives you to perform and outperform to your extreme best. He just made everyone far more powerful!
His enthusiasm for each piece and every player was evident in his consistent drive, the tension that would give way to every accent, constantly building each piece with endless reserves of energy and ideas that had him at one stage standing he was so excited, whacking his kit with precision and enthusiasm, rolling over his toms with guts and fury... cymbals like a sand storm against glass... he was just incredible, his head moving from left to right over a body that seemed too close to his kit. Whether big or small, from where I sat, he dominated his drums, calling his tribe to furious restlessness.
Not since some of the last live gigs I'd seen of the Freeboppers had I experienced anything of equal intensity as I had with the Restless Natives. With a recording session and album to follow, I hope they don't lose the energy they consume live in the studio as did the Freeboppers when they released their disappointing double-album. But by that stage they'd lost their drummer, Greg Sheehan, who like Naidoo, was integral to groups' dynamism and overall brain-mash potential. Still, as someone once said, studio recording or not, "Mark [Simmonds] tears the arse out of the saxophone".
For more on the Restless Natives, go to:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/36xsp9
Secession Update is published by Secession Records, Australia
Email. office@secession-records.org
Web. http://secession-records.org
Post. PO Box 1681, Collingwood, 3066, Australia
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