Sunrise

Here are some photos from our set at The Bioscope, courtesy of main-man Jacob Israel.





Now I'm jealous that I had my back to the screen the whole time. Pfft...
CF

20-20 Hindsight

It seems the longer you avoid updating a blog, the easier it gets to avoid updating it.

Truth be told, we really don't like empty blog-posts, so we've been waiting to post something worthwhile (although we've missed a few opportunities with pretty gig posters and another music video).

So, since our last update, the following has happened:
- We've played three wonderful gigs in Johannesburg in the last few months: The delightful Wolves Cafe as part of their Howl series


A subdued gig at Kitchener's as part of master scene supporter Ri's "Ssshh..." series with the talented Givan Lotz


The Bioscope with our mind-bending friends Fulka and Jacob Israel.



If you've got pictures of any these events, please "hook us up" as the kids would say.

- We've released our songs digitally on eMusic, iTunes (UK & US) and Spotify.

- We released our third video "An easy battle, a lost war". This video was shot by the ridiculously talented We Love Pictures. We heart them.

- ASOF collaborated with The Ocean Doesn't Want Me guys to perform, of all things, the Chris de Burgh song "I'm not scared anymore" at CF's wedding. We might be posting a video of that.

- We've started crafting a few new songs. All of them seem to have a common theme, so we might be going all Prog and doing it concept album style. Currently we're considering an EP format, but we're going to have a hard time deciding on which songs to put on there. Also, we'll probably drop the rough recordings on here as we complete them.

Hmmm, looking at it now, it seems there was a lot to be mentioned. Better late than never I guess.

A skyline burnt down

Slow Monday

Let’s try and not get ahead of ourselves. The battle is far from won you know, But! We will have some albums available, at R 120.00 from the brilliant Wolves Cafe from Monday, 6 December! As we get the album into more shops, we'll let you know.

If you are not in JHB, but residing somewhere else in ZA, drop us a mail at "askylineonfire at gmail dot com", and we can try to get a disk to you!

We’re currently waiting for a few things to fall into place, and then we’ll have a digital version of the album available, as well.

Instead of hand-packaging the albums like a good little Santa-helper, Werner has been busying himself with some renders of the packaging... Really, really useful. Thanks Werner!
I kid, Maaike and himself has been doing a sterling job of slapping these babies together.

Album Art: And that makes 12

Herewith the last of the album art, and one more song!

Hopefully by next week we'll be able to tell you where to pick up a copy.

An Easy Battle, a Lost War by A Skyline on Fire

Christmas Card Video

Our sexy friends, Shotopop, slapped this little guy together. We love it.

Please appreciate Werner's continuity in movement.

Album Art: Strike 3! You're nearly out...

More pretty from Maaike :) And some more tunage:

Cool Hero by A Skyline on Fire

So, earlier this year, our dear friends Carin and Casper came over from the SHOTOPOP headquarters in London. They were here to shoot a music video for Christmas Card.

Somewhere between the original idea for the song and the recording, we juiced the song up and molded it into a bit of a rocker. In that process I think we lost sight of how uncomfortable the song made us feel, and was supposed to make us feel.

Thankfully, we are dumb-lucky enough to know friends who didn't forget.

We can't wait to test our relationship with you.
ASOF

Album Art: Round 2

Here we go with another batch of album art. These are for the songs "Beware", "Christmas Card" and "Loose Thoughts".

Loose Thoughts features the tasty voice of one Mrs. Ola Kobak, from our friends Fulka. Have a listen below.

Loose Thoughts by A Skyline on Fire

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEMIX! Go!

Since we are primarily loop-based (hence our “clever” genre-description, if you’ve never noticed or caught up to that yet), we thought we’d present one of our songs in that fashion, rather than putting yet another mp3 up, pre-launch.

We put this little player together on Tuesday night, with most of the loops drawn from the completed song. It took all of the rest of the week to complete the darn thing. We initially wanted it to be html/javascript based, rather than Flash, but we found the javascript version way too unreliable to be fun, especially in certain browsers (IE8myshorts).

Werner even took some birthday time to get this baby done. Happy B-Day buddy!

Follow the link then, to play YOUR version of our song, Up.

Told you we'd be back

Maaike Bakker is gifted :) Check out her blog in our blog-list. She did the artwork for the album, and here is your first look at it. She grabbed a slice of lyrics from each song, and drew squiggly lines to fit. We love it! Thank you Maaike!

Also, we uploaded a song from these three. You hopefully already know Sinners, and you just need to wait a while longer to hear Up.


All for you by A Skyline on Fire












More later :)
CF+Werner

“All this time alone is going to take its toll, have to take it slow, going to take it slow.”

Before I could write this update, I had to read my previous post first, to make sure that I’m not backtracking on any previous promises or contradicting myself. It doesn’t seem like I alluded to anything as yet, thankfully.

During the next month, you WILL see more activity from our side. THAT is a promise. If it means that we have to stay up till 2 in the morning, Werner will stay up until 3. If it means clawing each others eyes out over artistic differences, Werner will lose a tooth as well. All of this will be aimed at putting a disk in your hand or an MP3 in your ear, by the end of this year, and maybe entertain you along the way.

I don't want to give too much away now, because I don't want to shoot myself in the foot. Not again. So here is a picture of us looking lost in the woods (notice that we're not looking eye-to-eye):

Self-prophesising album titles

So here we are: an album called ‘Slow’ taking forever to reach the public.

This post feels like that awkward conversation you have with a really close friend after you haven’t talked for too-long a time. It's not supposed to sound apologetic, although it might come across as the ramblings of a guilty man.

When we started the process of this album, I think we were aiming for an April or May release. We nearly made it! I mean, it’s only October now, and we're almost there - not exactly prolific... Granted, one half of this outfit (me, CF) has been out of action for what feels like forever. Not that I can use my hands for anything constructive at all, but I could have been force-feeding Werner coffee if I had the time.

In all honesty, I think we (I’m talking about the royal we at least) were relaxing a bit after we finished the recording and got the master back. It felt like: “battle won”. Of course that extra time was then automatically filled with stupid life stuff, pffft...

At this stage, I think all that Werner and I want to do is write new music. It seems much easier to come up with a new concept album/EP than it is to come up with a launch strategy. Neither of us have ever been the guy that does the actual planning for a launch, so we keep avoiding the question of a launch date. Hell, we’ve been eclipsed by our brilliant friends Fulka who recorded after us, and have already launched their album.

“Okay CF, enough yada yada. What are you actually saying?”

It is simple really: Werner has been kicking ass in silence, together with mastermind Maaike Bakker, and we’re so, so close. Don’t forget about us, we’re still the same guy. It’s just, we’ve been busy you know... and you don’t have to always wait for me to call.

We miss you,
CV+Werries

Check out the bed-head on this one

Bed-head? Check
Earphones? Check
Labello? Check
Almost spring morning? Check

She arrived this morning!

Daddy's proud :)

Album songs

A quick one!

- Werner is now either self-employed or unemployed (have not cleared that up yet), which might mean the progress on the album printing and music video conversions and stuff will progress a bit quicker.

- We are shooting another video on Saturday, with our beloved friends Shotopop, whom are here from England to enjoy sunny (yeah right) ZA!

- We have two songs up for download:
Beware
Sinners

Gotta catch'em all!

Sinners: Video Debut

If you've missed it, the album is called Slow.

We got the masters back the weekend before last! I am so happy with how it turned out. We had to get the master version of Sinners to Louis Minnaar, so that he could put his pretty with our pretty, and now it's ALL pretty.

If you have not seen it yet, here you go!



We'll be putting it to Beta ASAP and pushing it through to MK as quick as possible.

The artwork for the album is pretty much done, we'll probably see a final mock-up on Thursday, and then it's printing time baby! Hell yeah!

We had a blast playing with brilliant new friends, Eyes Like Mirrors, and old friends, The Ocean Doesn't Want Me, last Friday... Had some fun with a cover of Queen's "I want to break free". Never really realized it but that song has some desperate lyrics to it.

Check out Ben's blog here, Jenna's blog here and Maaike's blog here for some flattering words.

There is still hope for me and you

Ah, Longweekends: Video & Gig & Day 9

Photo courtesy of WeLovePictures.

We have not uploaded any new songs in a while; please enjoy this one:

An easy battle, a lost war

We took Thursday off from work to visit what can only be called Louis Minnaar's torture dungeon. He made my spine bend in directions that it was never meant to go.
After a delightful 6 or 7 hours spent under scorching lights, dressed in black from head to toe, he finally listened when we used the safe-word, and it was home time.

We drove to the city of Johannesburg in pouring rain and pouring traffic to get to the Bella vista lounge. After a two hour nightmare of a sound check, we played our set and the response was pretty okay, especially since we're not even sure where our songs are going at this stage.
The recording process has definitely messed with our live performance. But we'll sort it out. We stayed for Tale of the son's set, which was pretty damn awesome (made me think of IfyouarewhatyoueatIcouldbeyoubytomorrow). I was really disappointed to miss "Eyes like mirrors", but it was that or asleep at the wheel on the way back to Pretoria. We'll definitely organize something with them in the near future. Thanks to Riaan and the bands for the opportunity to play.

On Friday, we hit the studio again. My voice was shot by this stage, so we decided to postpone any vocal recording and focus on instrumentation for two songs: a reworked version of "Kids in bad water", and a reworked version of "Christmas card". Jacob played us some of the work he has been doing on the mixes, and I am enormously excited and proud to have other people hear this album.

JOBURG GIG!

Hey Peeps!

We're playing a should-be-awesome gig next Thursday... On the top of a roof! in the city of Jo'burg! Friday is a public holiday, so there is no excuse not be there.

Here's the facebook event:
TAKE ME SOMEWHERE NICE

Be There! (We're going to be)

Day 8

Jacob took some pictures of our process. I'll try and figure out how to create better web versions of them (no photoshop :( )

We're heading in to the studio in about an hour. Had to wake up early this morning to render out some drums.

We took the rest of the long weekend to complete pre-production on 3 songs: 'Kids in bad water' (as you've not heard it before, but we'll leave it to the album to do the surprising), Up (which was sounding the least convincing last night at 1am), and an accidental new one called 'An easy battle, a lost war'.

The plan is to record 2 songs today, but I suspect that we've made a slight miscalculation somewhere, and we might be pushing for all three tracks.

Day 7 - Expert Heart

Saturday came along, and the first thing we did was to have a (slow-) progress meeting. During our hearty heart-to-heart, we decided that our work rate is not where we want it to be. So, come the following few weeks, we are going to up the ante, and geturdun.

We focused on the track 'Expert Heart' this weekend. This is a very dear song to me. It might have something to do with where it comes from:
http://askylineonfire.blogspot.com/2009/09/expert-heart.html
We reverted back to our traditional roles, with Werner taking up more drum programming and guitar, and myself moaning nonsense into a mic.

Jacob thought that our idea of a "bass synth" was hilarious, and after he did a quick substitution for illustration purposes, I can now see why he thought so: HUGE! He also contributed some colossal drums that made my tummy feel funny.

I've yet to put some photos up, will try to do that in the week.

Can not wait to play this to people.