I haven't even had a chance to catch my breath after returning to Africa on Wednesday and already I'm slaving away on more exciting sass-ventures. And while I'm rather bummed that since I got home I haven't even had the time to unwrap the rather hefty pile of X-Box games I accumulated in the 3 weeks I was in the UK, what's even more depressing is that I've not had a moment to write about anything that happened on my trip. To make matters worse, within the first 48 hours of been back I was involved in something so exciting that I'm now taking this time to talk about that and not my time in Europe.
Last night I was one of about a dozen people operating camera's for the shoot of what will become the first DVD release for Pretoria-prog-pop-pioneers Isochronous. To say the set-up for the event was impressive would be a colossal understatement.
With virtually no budget, last night's shoot was easily one of the single greatest examples of how incredible it can be when a large group of people, focus a massive amount of passion, energy and enthusiasm towards a single unified goal.
Invading a medium sized sound stage at the SABC, a large, multi-layered stage was constructed. I don't really have the time (or the technical vocabulary) to explain the rest of what was constructed around this stage, but what I can say is through the lens of my camera it looked incredible, and through my ears it sounded even better.
Isochronous performed two separate, hour longs sets. The first was a performance of the songs from their self titled début album. The second set was a collection of the songs that Isochronous will be recording for their follow up album. Performing these newer songs, the band crashed an overwhelming tidal wave of shear joy over the audience. Seeing this, I have no doubt this second album will be one of the finest examples of the Zeitgeist that's been blowing through Pretoria the past few years.
Well, I better get back to work. Once things calm down a bit I will definitely post on all the awesomeness of my European adventure, and there was definitely a whole lot of awesomeness. But that said I did also witness:
*A whole city of people that couldn't get home in under 2 hours if they stayed out past midnight.
*10 000 girls that had self-tanned themselves orange.
*1045 people wearing what was essentialy the same t-shirt.
*600 people watching the Phenomenal Handclap band and not dancing.
*252 of the worst TV ads I've ever seen.
*100 tabloids obsessed with a separated couple that were famous for no reason in the first place.
*12 DJs playing the same soulless, banging crap.
*3 hacks wearing headbands, tunelessly hitting three planks of wood and singing in fake South American accents.
After seeing these horrors I'm even more appreciative to be living in a far more free, and in my opinion alive country. Been a part of the Isochronous shoot last night couldn't have been a more perfect welcome home for me, and a more shining example of the kind of raw, un-chained enthusiasm I missed while I was gone.
All photos by Hayden Plath
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