Shazam!!!

*POOF!!!*

... and like that I'm back!

So it's been almost a year since I made any kind of animal calls.

The reason I'm back is I'm planning on re-incarnating this dead blog to become a kind of single document of what I've been doing over the past 5 years. I'm currently planning a trip to the UK and I'm hoping to try play some shows while I'm over, but I really don't quite know how to sell myself to any promoters over there, given that what I've been doing has gone almost entirely un-documented.

So yeah, hopefully So Many Animal calls will serve as quite a good focal point for me bring together various relics of the parties I've been throwing, the creatures I've been drawing, the visuals I've been animating and the discos I've been DJing.

This new agenda for SMAC means I'll need to start writing quite differently. In the past I've written as though I'm speaking to a friend that knows exactly what I'm talking about. This made sense, because who other than my friends would be paying attention to what I had to say anyway.

Obviously that's gonna have to change, but hopefully the photos, flyers, videos and songs I post will speak for themselves and i won't have to do to much explaining. But in honor of the old Animal Calls, let me do one last bit of writing were I don't need to give any back story or explanation; if for no-one other than myself, here's a quick recap of what's gone down since I last wrote anything here...

* We ended Sovereign Academy!
15 parties and 3 years down the line, Matt and I killed Sovereign Academy off with an awesome graduation party. I'll be sure to do a post about the whole thing soon.

* Unit R lost their drummer to the States and have yet to perform live since.

* The New Loud Rockets broke up. RIP.

* The Incredible 5 Men, 3 Missing broke up. RIP

* Us Kids Know pretty much broke up, reformed, played a show and changed their name to "Sad Swamps".

* Paul, under his King of Town moniker produced some fantastic remixes!
He was asked to do a mix of "Moon Song" by UK cosmic-core innovators "They Came From The Stars, I saw them.". The vinyl release of this mix was backed by Holy Ghost, which is just too cool. Even cooler was that French Label "Tiger Sushi" did a vinyl release for his epic remix of Desmond and the Tutus' "Kiss on the Cheek"!!!

* I discovered amazing new music been made in South Africa.
The emergence of bands like Sticky Antlers, New Holland, The Arrows, Pink Noise, The Plastics, Tinto, The Shadow Club and Organized Distortion have gotten me even more excited about things over here.

* It turned out there's this absurdly cool DIY record label running out of Pretoria!
"The Kringy Label" had released dozens of hand made, individually numbered singles, EPs, albums, DVDs, toys and accessories right under my nose I never had a clue.

* A single new DJ emerged in this time!
His name is NathanScottPhillips and he's great.

* Yesterday's Pupil independently released his debut album.

* Desmond and the Tutus finally released their massively anticipated debut album.

* I stopped playing shows with Johnny Neon.

* I started playing shows with Kidofdoom. Will post about this.

* I got a job!
At 24, for the fist time in my life, i got a 9 - 5 job working as the creative director for YOTV.

* I turned old.
I had my 25th birthday in December, I don't know if I'm still allowed to call myself a kid anymore.

* Almost simultaneously ALL the counter-cultural coolness in my neighborhood curled up and died.
While a year ago I'd have argued that Melville was one of the most exciting places in Johannesburg, it's now quite the opposite. Within a few months Canned Applause (the countries only independent music shop), Ke Ai (the coolest asian pop culture store in the city) and Tokyo Star (the club I played every Thursday for 3 years) all closed their doors, leaving Melville as nothing more than a street full of restaurants and curio shops. The only conceivable upside of this is that Johannesburg now finally has a Mexican restaurant. Last month Cafe Mexico opened in old home of Tokyo Star.

* A new club called the Woods opened in Newtown.
My main man Matt Suttner started throwing a series of parties there called Pixel Pop. With a projector above the dance floor and a screen behind the DJ both, Pixel Pop nights have become the closest thing jozi has to a regular VJ party with makes me very very happy.

* Griet got born!
My friends Dom, Joe and Ryk started up an artist management and event design company called Griet. With Kidofdoom, Isochronous, Yesterday's Pupil, Unit R and myself forming the company's roster of acts, it's a pretty awesome little family to be a part of. They've already done some awesome stuff, and even more awesome awesomeness is sure to follow.

* After Sovereign I took a very long break from events, only throwing one other event last year.
It was a night called Electric Affair and it was the very first disco revival party in the city. It was super cool and we're hopping to do another one soon.

* Last Saturday I threw a party with the Griet kids.
Called "Now It's On" it was a kind of prototype for the party we'll be doing as the follow up to Sovereign Academy. It was a ridiculously fun - I'll do a full post about it soon.

I think that's pretty much it... Oh! In my last post from 24 May 2008 I wrote about two videos (Johnny Foreigner's "Eyes Wide Terrified" and Errors' "Salut! France") that I was watching on repeat. About a week ... actually, this post is far to long already, I'll save my tale of the universe been awesome to me for next time!

Keep it real kids!

B