Early Hours set to take music scene by storm
SUNDAY’S instalment of the monthly live music festival, Park Acoustics, promises to be yet another electrifying show. Not only will it be headlined by Afrikaans electronic band, Die Heuwels Fantasties, it also features an interesting list of supporting acts, which includes up-and-coming rock band Early Hours.
It’s a big show for the band but they aren’t overawed by it. Earlier in the year they opened for American folk rock band, The Lumineers, and they’re currently embarking on a winter tour. I hung out with the band’s Jake Bennett (vocals/ songwriter) and Adam Rothschild (lead guitar/ songwriter) to find out a bit more about the band, whose claim to fame was becoming the first South African band to clock one million streams on SoundCloud.
The Capetonians have been working together since they met during a music class in Grade 8. They loved the same type of music so they figured it just made sense for them to work together.
A few months later they entered a music competition that required them to put together a band. “We went around in our high school auditioning all the best players,” Bennett explains. And that’s how they came across their bassist, Benson Joubert. They’ve been working non-stop ever since and they’re still loving it. “We like writing music. That’s the nice thing about our job is that it’s our hobby and our passion.”
Their dreams keep evolving. When they started, they just wanted to make music and perform. Now, they’re aiming to expand their reach beyond South Africa and take the global market by storm.
Rothschild recalls how, in their early days, one of their main missions was to play at a local club called Assembly, a place they’d seen many of their favourite bands play. After regularly e-mailing the club without response, the club ended up noticing the strides they were making and finally called them back. Not long after, they started performing there each month.
After watching a few of their performances on YouTube, I was drawn to a video of them putting on an energetic performance of a colourful and bouncy song called Dance Along at a Park Acoustics show last year. “That was a tame one,” Bennett says of the performance. “Our big thing is dancing and getting everyone to dance. We come off stage every single time having left everything out there.”
Rothschild has been drawing a lot of inspiration from hip hop shows, which he describes as being on “another level”. Their aim is always to add their own unique African flavour.
“That was always really important to us because obviously in a country like South Africa so much of our culture is forced on us from the States,” says Bennett. “All the TV shows are American and even what we hear on radio. I mean, we have such incredible music in this country. It’s important for us that we try and play on that level that the foreigners are playing on, but play in our own way.” Another standout cut from their catalogue is
Mojito Midnight, which sees Bennett referencing experiences he had when he was working in some high-end cocktail bar in Cape Town. It’s a beautifully constructed record.
Right now, they’re finishing off some new music that they’re hoping to release soon. The new stuff has a lot of hip hop influence and takes a different musical direction. Says Rothschild: “We’ve kind of all just hit our 20s and we’re realising that the world can be a scary place. And it can be a wonderful place as well. I think our music always reflects what we’re feeling and right now we’re in the process of just trying to work it out”.