Just like Santa Clause, tonight

We had an awesome time playing at The Watermark High's album launch. Well, right up to the point where the rain gate crashed their set after just one song. But that one song was undeniably worth it. Thanks to them. You can hear our remix of one of their songs on their myspace - http://www.myspace.com/thewatermarkhigh

So, yesterday evening we had a bit of time on our hands. We thought we'd try our hand at a Christmas song, you know, with the 35 degree Celsius heat, the thunderstorms dropping by unannounced, the year-tired attitudes we all exude, it just seemed Christmas-y.

Werner was picking away at an acoustic, trying to find "the sound of Christmas". I kept telling him he needs jingle bells. He got stuck on this one chord that basically became the key for the song, while I tried to figure out some lyrics.

The Pretoria heat got to me at this stage, and instead of thinking "Christmas = cozy", I started thinking "Christmas = claustrophobia". We've got heat and humidity that squeezes every last ounce of patience out of you, we've got people that think that a week or two's worth of rest will rejuvenate them for a whole new year of torture, and then, we use that week of rest to make food the whole day and try to fit to much into that time frame. This lead me to think: what if, on Christmas eve, you decide "this is it", and leave a breakup-card. (Needless to say my girlfriend has been looking at me strangely since reading the lyrics).

Werner dropped the axe, picked up a keyboard, and found a bass-y sound. We recorded the vocals, and then decided to have a bit of fun with it, so, on this song we have my dear girlfriend, Thea-Mari (whom is still my dear girlfriend) joining us on hand claps. At one stage she got hungry and went to get some cereal (but the milk was sour, so she ate it dry). We recorded her chewing, and loved the marching sound it made, so we left it there. (you can also hear some click track bleeding through, although very faintly)

Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy our Christmas breakup song:

Christmas Card


This will be our last post for the year, we've started contemplating an album, so our posts might suffer a bit in the near future. We think it will be worth it.

Have a tremendous holiday, look after the ones you love, and take a five minute breather at some stage.

Much love
A skyline on Christmas-light-disaster

I promise it's not a solo act

Two weeks ago we realized that we did not have a set ready for The Watermark High album launch... in an attempt to avoid looking like fools, we decided that we might have to graft on that for a bit. So we've been busy figuring out how to play some songs, rewriting some other songs, throwing away perfectly good ideas and not committing to anything for longer than 10 minutes.

This has left us with no time to record anything of value. Way to discredit your own blog!

In order to prove that we are still alive (well, at least one of us), we've decided to upload one of my random ideas that I recorded before work one morning or before sleep one evening. This will probably take some hugely mutated form in the future, for now it's just me moaning layer after layer. I'm like Shrek in that way (dated pop-reference: check). here you go:

Deal with them later, deal with them later, deal with them later


I'll try to incorporate Werner into the act at some stage, he really is more than just a pretty face, you know.

Your breath. it hurts. my ears. my love.

Exams are done, and I think so is The Watermark High's remix, so we've had a chance to play. Yippee! But first, some background:

So, when we started out and I had oodles of time at hand, we would do these 4 hour (at least) practices in a rehearsal studio, every now and again. One day, during a little break, I was messing around with my vocal effects, and then a weird overly dramatic song poured out of me. Granted, at that time, I was on a staple diet of Boris and Michio Kurihara's "Rainbow" album, and I was listening to "Raflessia" on repeat for about a week straight.If I remember correctly, the rest of that practice was highjacked by that song, trying to figure out what exactly to do with it.

It's almost a year now, and yesterday we decided to give this one a go, and perhaps attempt to add some quality control to it (as in not just blindly jamming it out while recording).

The song is called Yourbreathithurtsmyearsmylove

My love, your angles up, I'm tired
Drenched in tar, and seeping out, tired...
Behind this door, behind these eyes, Im waiting for rest.


Hope you enjoy it, and expect it to be a bit louder than our usual output here. Check back during the next few weeks, we'll try to cram a few of these in before the end of the year.

This blogpost goes: swish!

Watermark High Remix: plotted and schemed, need original wav's in order for it not to be a cover but a remix, If you run into Paul vd Walt, remind him with a slap against the head.

Exams: 1 down, 2 to go.

New Stuff: I suffer from self-diagnosed A.D.D. and have thus committed to stringent focus on 1 thing at a time, thus only looking at the Watermark High Remix... Please tell Paul vd Walt to move it along, he's holding up our new ideas.

Old Stuff: Luckily for all of us, Werner keeps tabs on every stupid idea I send him, he suggested I "expose" you guys to this one

Forgiveness


Hope you enjoy it, back to the wait...

A moment of silence

If you have not done so already, please download The Watermark High's new album here.
It is a free download, and it is beautiful. Please support them and tell your friends about it as well. I can personally vouch for the soothing effect it has on software developer rage.

We are currently working on a remix of one of the tracks from the album, in between me studying for exams, hence the lack of new ideas posted here. It is definitely a worthwhile exercise, as I think both of us have discovered a bunch of new styles and techniques, which should fuel the creative fire, even if they don't make it onto the remix. We're both pretty excited to be working on this, and the stuff we've got thus far makes me smile.

GO AND DOWNLOAD THAT ALBUM
CF

to love and cradle

Although we generally try to either kind of complete an idea, or at least both contribute to it first, before uploading it, I thought that you might enjoy this track in its raw a capella form. It is called “all for you”, and it is something I threw together on Tuesday evening with my new audio interface. I love that thing.

Here goes, hope you enjoy it: All for you

It ends abruptly, and we are in two minds on whether we want to elaborate the song in terms of length, maybe another chorus or something... drop us a line and give us your two cents on it.

We’re opening for THE WATERMARK HIGH on the 20th of November 2009. This will be the release party for their astounding album: Loneliness as an art form. We’d be honoured to have you join us at +27 Design Café in Duncan Street, Hatfield, Pretoria, South Africa, if not for us, then for the intricate and delicate weave of their songs.

Keeping promises

When a Skyline on Fire makes a promise, you best believe that we'll follow up on that promise... like a blood oath, or something: enforceable by death... I say this now because we could actually keep the promise made in our previous post, so don't come knocking on our door with a nine' when we promise an album and nothing materializes.

It's Monday, and here's a new song, entitled "heat stroke". If you really want to experience the true "feel" of the song, you'll have to wait until a hot and humid day comes along before listening to it, otherwise, just imagine technology rage.

Heat Stroke

We've been asked to play at The Watermark High's album launch in November, more news later. If you've not checked them out yet, go to The Watermark High, but be warned, this is serious pillow-rock.

All the Nissan's in the world could not carry me to you

Execution failure

You know that thing where a word does not sound like it is part of the English language after enough repetitions? We were talking gibberish for three hours last night. Over, and over, and over, and over, and over, anovuh...

We had all these grand plans to record a little demo something. But technology got the best of us, as each got a Line 6 Toneport UX2 yesterday, and things went from tinkering with new toys to full out trance inducing repetition.

We would have gladly recorded what we did last night, but I dont think you want to listen to three hours of the same riff. I'll try to verbalise some of the ideas, maybe we'll get it down in this weekend: stupidly simple drumbeat, some chanting about heart attacks and not fussing it, megaphones, beautiful blurred beats that wash over you, a cranky organ, and a guitar line to drowse by.

See, now we've committed, we have to record it and upload it... and if we don't, you can report us to the internet lying commission.

As a peace offer, to say sorry we forgot to press the record button, here is a very rough demo of another song, called stuck... you'll notice that the voices don't really align all to well and that it carries on for too long, as per usual.

Stuck.mp3

So sorry,
A skyline on multiplug-overload

Thursday, 1 Oct: +27 Design Cafe

Hey there internet people!

Just a little note to let you know that we'll be performing this Thursday at +27 Design Cafe in Hatfield, Pretoria.

It's informal, outdoors, the Cappuccino is tu-die-fo' and I believe that they've still got a Louis Minnaar exhibition running that has to be experienced in all its black and white splendor. Bring a bottle of wine, and come and relax.

Lets hope that the weather is kind enough to spare us a few hours.

Baby, Im a broken down lover in this

So, a little while back we had the tremendous pleasure to play at CitySlickers, an art exhibition organized by our dear friend Maaike (check out her blog: Whatever I can think of).

We had such an awesome time that night, and the people at the exhibition was wonderfully receptive.

This is a videoclip done by someone. I'm not entirely sure who it was yet, but I'll find out, and as soon as we've confirmed we'll give the due credit.
Edit: Our friend Bernard tells us that his friend, and now ours, Vaughan took the footage. Thanks Vaughan, much love.

The song is called Cool Hero, hope you enjoy it, especially the off-key start that I had and very quickly needed to rectify.

Expert Heart

Expert Heart.mp3

A rough track we did one Saturday a few weeks ago.

Werner is doing vocals on this one, it's pretty buried in the accidental mix, I like where it ended up. He's muttering something about holding your tongue if you're wondering. Also, some acoustic guitars (mangled beyond recognition), and a bass drone courtesy of Ableton Live.

The recording might sound a bit long winded, but I think it works well when you allow yourself to be consumed by it.

Hope you find and enjoy this.

Love you long time
CF

Happy Feet

How cool is our header ? Louis Minnaar did us the HUGE favour of dragging us to a dodgy alleyway and snapping at our feet. It was quite an enjoyable experience to work with Louis. His sense of conviction is so infectious, that we never once doubted the very random props that he was tossing around.

We've decided to start a little blog to share rough demos that we've been working on in my apartment. I say "rough", because they are recorded once off and rendered out from there, without any further mixing. Expect an upload tomorrow.

We'll also use this space to try and keep people up to date with whatever Werner is killing his time with at work.

Till tomorrow then.