Nude Girls spring to life
Springbok Nude Girls burst onto the South African rock scene in 1994 and went into a hiatus in 2001 – with the five artists doing their own thing and getting together sporadically. Today the band releases a new single, Beautiful
Evolution, on vinyl.The original line-up of Arno Carstens, Adriaan Brand, Arno Blumer, Theo Crous and Francois Kruger is intact. They are going on the road to promote their album. Brand offers insight into what we can expect from the band’s reawakening, writes
LAST year, the Springbok Nude Girls opened for the international act, The Pixies.
Thrilled by the enthusiastic response, they decided it was time to write new music and perform live. In the past decade, between gigging, their pursuits have been diverse: music, IT, advertising and community arts. Beautiful Evolution is the first new music since the band’s EP release in 2011. The last full-length album was released 10 years ago.
When Adriaan Brand is not prancing around as a rock star, he works as development project director for community arts music project Music van de Caab – at Solms-Delta and Boschendal in the Cape Winelands. He is also studying at the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship and is completing an MBA at UCT – and he is a music therapist.
Here you are in 2018. What are the Springbok Nude Girls bringing to the table?
What we hope to bring to the table with Beautiful Evolution is a sense of contentment with life, peace with where we are and are at. The band are about showing not the way, but a way, for our generation and those following. In the 1990s we demonstrated it was possible to take a past and national identity fraught with isolation, pain and difficulties and transform it into something imaginative, creating a new identity to be proud of again. Today I think the message that needs to be heard is: chill, love life, yourself and others. Let’s walk what remains of the road ahead as kindly as we can. Take it easy on yourselves.
How would you describe the band’s music now – as opposed to a decade ago?
“That’s an interesting question. Of course our production know-how has just kept developing, expanding and enriching. However, over a near-quarter decade of creative productivity we have pretty much covered a lot of stylistic ground. We’ve arguably experimented more widely than most bands I’ve been watching. The new material goes back to basics and that makes me personally very happy. It’s hard. It rocks and sometimes it’s epic. It’s clean, uncomplicated and effective – very much like tuning an approach to life towards centralising core strengths and cutting the fat. At the same time, the production is sounding better than ever: responsive, richly textured but with clarity, as well as thick and stimulating without getting over-complicated.”
The name – The Springbok Nude Girls – is a reference to the Springbok Radio compilation albums of hit songs. The albums had bikini girls on their covers. There was always irony in the title but it’s hyper-irony now, isn’t it?
Well, the point of iconoclasm is taking the problematic, subverting it and offering it up in a new guise …Irony is the clothes on the nude girl. Iconoclasm is in her muscles and bones. Irony comes and goes, it morphs: what is ironic today might become tomorrow’s inadvertent perpetuation of problematic and oppressive differentials. Iconoclasm is a saving grace. It is fundamentally opposed to established and inequitable flows of power… As long as there are icons, we’ll be taking them on and the mere act of doing so keeps the ironies fresh and disruptive.
Has it been a beautiful evolution getting together a decade later and writing new music? Have you all evolved? You are all in your forties.
Damn right. We’re all between 44 and 46 years old but we can kick up mighty mean. I think we’ve evolved and matured pleasantly and self-reflectively and on the physical side we’ve been making commendable efforts to stem the eventually inevitable tide of organic decrepitude. Bring your dancing gear.”
Beautiful Evolution has been released on a limited edition signed 7-inch vinyl and features Best Friends, Best Enemies on the B-side. Digital release is tomorrow. Two gigs in Cape Town: April 30 at Hillcrest Quarry, Durbanville. Special guests Lithium, Medicine Dolls and Latex Grenade and May 4 at The District, Cape Town. Special guests Lithium, Stoker and Latex Grenade. Tickets R150 /Webtickets. VIP meet-and-greet packages include numbered and signed 7-inch vinyl and drinks. Footage, filmed on your phone and your experiences will be edited into the official fan music video of the track and released on YouTube. Info www.nudegirls.co.za
For your chance to win tickets to one of the Cape gigs, see the freebies column in today’s ToTT.