are you serious? just for the experience?

image : http://www.makeando.co.za/

Two bands, one song. It’s edgy, if you’re smooth. It’s hard, if you’re soft. It’s rock, if you’re pop.

Foto Na Dans has been silent for ages. They do that a lot, have you noticed? In between explosions of incredibly ornaMental magic (and my kittens fart a lot. Because they're Mental)

But now it’s summer, and we're smiling, even if we can’t afford it, and Foto have a new song. Well. half of a new song. Well, no, half of a chorus. And some riffs between beats.

It’s a collaboration which is aiming itself straight at the dans floor, and might well floor detractors of attractive commercial compositions. They'll frown, they'll tap their feet and nod their heads, bemused, because this is the beauty of music - it makes its own rules, and breaks them just as easily.

Here we were thinking Foto were the last of the puritans. Maybe they're the first of the finest to go, 'fuck it, we're going to make this work (financially)'. This collabotrack is, ipso facto, a fascinating contrast to their erstwhile EP, Pantomime Op Herwinbare Klanke, whose evolving narrative placed the band in the league of gentle men who make music for art cinema and theatre. Being a veteran Foto fan, a puritan; i'm bemused, my feet are tapping, my head is nodding and i guess i'm grateful for new track because it's a chance for me to practise a bit of diplomacy. In contrast to the earlier EP, the single Dans Republic is a pointed reminder of Foto's flexibility. in comparison to Foto's other compositions it also highlights the fact that dance music is really rather taut, where classical prog rock is perhaps taught. or untied....

why>? well, check the choon.
verse/chorus/verse/chorus it goes. obvious, you say, that's most music. but it's also much the same on a micro level, and that's its defining (in)difference. Op af op af. High five for a clever chorus - old school and heady and easy, but splicey, too. You’ll spend some time finding just where it moves from on glaise to dee taal. Don't think too hard, just dans - it’s all in the details. Not that I can quite trace Le Roi in those details, and is it really Foto if all you've got is the biting grind of that guitar? Also, can't say I think much of the derivative melodies. There are moments where it feels like a pastiche of recycled classic pop refrains and moments where that doesn't matter because it's a banging ballad. If they are subconscious cut & pastes, they blend well, and that's where the foot tapping head nodding comes in. But maybe I'm wrong, maybe the formula of easy sound is simply used so universally that after a while all dance songs sounds the same. Still, there are definite references to top forty hits from our t(w)eens...and

it’s edgy, if you’re smooth. It’s hard, if you’re soft. It’s rock, if you’re pop. But the bottom line is that it is a fine, bilingual, cross-genre fusion, and there aren’t many musicians who can mix the delightful simplicity of dance music with the darkness of cathedral rock without also making a mess. Instead, Flash Republic and Foto have made a summer club and compilation hit, and I’m sure TeeJay is taking notes. I'm proud of both bands for standing up and facing the music in a gutsy display of commercially viable sonic diversity. Have both parties put their best foot forward or have they put their foot in it? I'll love dancing to it because it has a history and a future, because it's catchy and I can. But I'm not necessarily going to buy it. Oh wait! they anticipated that. It's available free for download.

http://www.dansrepublic.co.za/page2.html

Boof boof boof boof.

Take the chance.

AfriDans.

p.s. there is a huge irony in the line 'ek wil sing in Afrikaans'. But i guess only Anglo-Saxon fan/atics of an Afrikaans language band will smile along with me on that one.

Intervensie... Inter alia... inter esting (a eulogic benediction )

It's been a long time coming...

You know you’re committed when you tune into the last precious days of an album being a band’s definitive product before the eruption of a new one relegates it to recovery, and it makes you cherish it all the more. It’s exactly inside this antici

pation that

a retrospective is ripe.

On the eve of Foto Na Dans’s new release I’m listening to “Intervensie” a lot, with a certain wry joy and a new appreciation for an incredibly balanced debut that has carried me though my own imbalances more than once (sometimes kicking and screaming, ja.) They have their own criticisms of its placement in their musical motif, but to my mind the collection of songs is both a spiritual biography and a kindergarten of elements that will find and refine itself into an unmistakably unique South African sound that knows the importance of the silence between notes.

The first bars of Oorywerige Gelowige open with a brittle air of expectancy that expands into a surge of strength. It’s an approach employed in breaths and breaks throughout the album. Between anthemic, singular notes and floods of full, five-piece sound, the poignant and powerful music is sprinkled with symbols of self realisation, restraint, and strains of self doubt. It’s run-through with focused emotional insights full of comfort and disconcertion, blood, belief, and deliverance from both. As an inaugural offering, the album is not a manifesto, but it has the essence of one in its elliptical intentions; and in hindsight, i believe, it will be recognized for its lucid insights that already prophecy Foto Na Dans’s feathering and unfolding.

Musically, the album faces the facts of life – separation, union, expansion, isolation, destruction, creation, continuation. Maybe, then, a discography that starts with “Intervensie” begs to continue with something associative like "Evolusie", but it’s more likely that the new EP will have an utterly poetic, slightly obscure title that makes perfect sense only on reflection. Their poetry is fluid, not stolid, after all. Their song names and stand-alone phrases don’t create billboards with dictatorial statements, they create psycho-spiritual co-ordinates that change as you change. Besides, some of their brightest brilliance is subversive; at the very beginning of a swelling journey, they’re already too sophisticated and seriously artful to wallow in self-congratulatory self-reference. Instead of talking to themselves or at the world, they start a conversation with it. They talk about things that want out, and things that remain true no matter how shaken one's core is. Things like the autumnal logic in Vergeet Van My and the exigent expulsion in Die Wals. Things that more and more people relate to.

Flying forty five degrees uphill towards the top since they launched “Intervensie” late last year, they had every right to believe their lyrics held a self-fulfilling prophecy, for better or for worse. The album sold with incremental intensity, the band got SAMA nods, MK 89 broadcast them, their Facebook fan-count got fatter by the show and festivals gobbled them up like a Box Street whore (respek, Jaxon Rice, for that line!). They believed, we believed, but we all bled for it, too. With admittedly no respect at all to the actual chronology of their lyrical narrative (or the order of the songs on the album), i'll go as far as to say it's a long journey from the sentiments in “Hou jou hande bymekaar / en glo die roes sal bedaar” to “My gedagtes behoort agter tralies / Daar’s net plek vir een in my kis”, and they had to take it. More than once. Metaphorically and literally, it seemed words manifested in reality; and while it wasn’t something they first appreciated, a distinct growth period was gifted them late summer 2008. Neither would you, really, no matter how much you believe in your music - it’s very difficult to argue with silence when there are no notes between to differentiate it from forever.

Forever didn't last long. Though the boys were forced to bend to the will of the Fates for a few worrying months while Le-Roi nursed ailing vocal chords, they'd been planning some breaks from public performance to write and record new material and catch up with their non-musical commitments, anyway. The infection effectively escalated their sabbatical, prolonged their silence and changed their tune. Right now, they’re putting finesse and power into recording the final throes of what has been a tumultuous and redefining period for them.

Guitarist Neil Basson on the changes:

“The incident evoked particular emotions, which actually inspired the writing process and steered the whole project into a new direction. I think that bands often find themselves in a comfortable groove that works; the hard part is breaking away and trying something new without the guaranteed success experienced before.”

“Our previous album had too many loose ends. Songs and concepts were a bit divergent, not really successfully capturing the ethos of our convictions concerning the musical integrity and message. We don’t regret releasing the album, it’s just a certain sense of artistic integrity that was lacking. [With the EP] we scaled down on the details, the focus shift was directed towards the album as a whole. Instruments were seen only as a means to achieve the final uniform sound, whereas “Intervensie” often relied on specific bursts of individual instruments to captivate the listener. “

Was it a relief to have Le-Roi back in business, or did it feel natural?

“A relief yes, we’re just happy that he’s making a good recovery. It felt different, but in a good way. It was the first time, basically since we had to cancel the Durbanville show (after the first song) that the five of us could sit together and just be friends again, outside of the band context.”

The seven new tracks due for release early August will put anthems like Die Wals and Oorywerige Gelowige deftly into the debutante category. Yet, in the face of an ageless album quickly being overshadowed by excitement over new material, the gentle men of Foto Na Dans are just getting into their talent and focus. i am convinced that this band has a lot to offer South African music on the whole and Rock in particular and is going to continue to break new musical ground.

So from this eulogy/ tribute / retrospective I’d like to extract a blessing for the EP to be : that what started with Intervensie continues without a score, and that fans and music lovers alike keep time with an open mind.

T.S Eliot said it best. “The end is where we start from.”

Here’s to both.

(Foto Na Dans launch and christen the new EP at Oppikoppi , 7 – 9 August 2008 )

(Intervensie will not be put to rest. not now. not ever.)

über-talented lead vocalist, Le-Roi Nel in studio midyear 2008
(photo by Alex Fourie)

(top photo by sean metelerkamp)

Spacebook

MyFace

foto na dans. first time.

(Read the Levis version)

Foto Na Dans. Switch on. Turn it up. Let go. The trumpet uplifts and underlines, the vocals are unequivocally incendiary, the lyrics evocative and empowering, especially on the subject of loss, regret and weakness. Because they’re honest and naked, the guitars grind everything into gold dust, and the operatic overtures demand high regard. These boys from Bellville haven't finished varsity, but they've already written anthems like "Vergeet Van My", and even their songs of rejection are festering with a fine love.

Across the country, artists are engaging with their particular national angst like it’s the new economic commodity rather than a deplorable sell-out. While others are busy licking the wound of our collective historical hangover with rotten tongues, Foto Na Dans have torn theirs out, and they aren't crying about it. They're having none of the spiritual decay bequeathed us by dead and dying despots. Their sound is saturated with a new glory that defies the schitzophrenic socio-political depression that artists across the country have adopted as their heritage. They give new meaning to the term 'expression' and purge their systems every time they play. It’s emotional, powerful and triumphant music. Theirs is the glory of turning a wound into a scar instead of sacrificing the self to self-pity. The difference is audible; they find beauty in imperfection and strength in loss, they make music that swells and crashes without getting messy. Their compositions are strong, strange and sexy, and on stage, so are they.

It's a new voice on the cultural landscape; one giant leap on from the dithering, disgraceful sentiments of jm coetzee, and more promising and refined than the formidable aural tantrums of Fokofpolisiekar, whose references to inspiration and influence i expect the public will graduate from in the near future. For Afrikaans youth, they bring hope against the odds of entrenched social repression and embedded political regression. In departure from the norm of white rock, their significance reaches beyond their back yards. They share their universal message in Afrikaans, the mother tongue of more than 6 million different people, with emotion that defies social or racial stratification. It offers sensitive (hurt, hopeful, hungry) souls of every background, orientation and intention across the land a flood of feeling drenched in individuality and freedom. hell, Madiba should be head banging with them.

And speaking of wise men and wise words, we forget that the greatest gift you can give your audience is to truly be yourself. Foto Na Dans give with grace, measure and a focused passion that anoints the music. And it’s this that will keep their real fans close as they grow. Their music liberates. All you have to do is stand still and listen. You won't be still for long.

(Photo from Foto Na Dan’s Myspace album)

(Foto Na Dans on facebook )