You are invited: gateway Drugs Farewell

This weekend I'll be playing a pretty special show; one where we'll be saying farewell to one of the best musical projects South Africa has seen over the past few years. Gateway Drugs, The Cape Town kings of synth-pop, are calling it a day.

This is pretty heavy news. The Drugs have soundtracked some of my favourite moments over the past few years. From that time I used their song in that Michel Gondry video to the time they turned me into a sweaty mess on the Kitchener's dancefloor, these songs and I have had some grand times together. I'm pretty grateful that I get to be around on the night where they're played for the (let's hope not really) last time.

The farewell gig should be a pretty great one, with support from some of the best DJs the city has to offer. I'll be playing some records as Sassquatch, and playing some visuals with the band. Shit's gonna get emotional.

RSVP here!

SMACM012: Birthday Girl - Rituals

 
Yesterday SMAC music launched "Rituals" our twelfth release, and the debut EP by Cape Town Trio Birthday Girl. It's a really fantastic, diverse collection of songs. Truly original, I won't even hazard a guess at what genre's I might be able to attach to the EP. Instead let me just direct your ears to the links below so you can have your own hard time trying to find words that match these sounds.



For easy repeat listens, head over to our bandcamp and download the EP. As always, the digital release is out on "pay what you want" model. Some kind of interesting physical release is on the cards too!

Birthday Girl are celebrating the launch of Rituals with their first live show on Sunday the 31st of May at Straight No Chaser. after many months of rehersal, it's going to be fantastic to see the guys unveiling thier live show - I think it's going to be something very special.

RSVP here!

Birthday Girl unveiled!

Let's quickly address the fact that this place is a ghost-town. The reasons are way to complex to quickly unpack here, but if you've wondered what's happened to me, I'm investing most of my free time and energy into making games, and blogging about it here. After months of tumbleweeds, if there was something that could bring SMAC back from the grave, it would have to be great music. As luck would have it, that's exactly what we have right here.

Birthday Girl is the freshly unveiled, new musical project of Daniel Breiter (Fun Toy, HOOM), Dean Berger (Bateleur co-Founder) and Glenn Stein (Los Tacos). Late last year the guys handed me a collection of songs, that I swiftly found myself completely in love, and totally obsessed with. Many months, lots of hard work and much planning later, and we're all incredibly proud to be working together to bring these songs to The World in the form of Birthday's Girl's debut EP, Rituals.

Rituals will be out on Wednesday the 20th via our Bandcamp and Soundcloud. The 12th release by SMACM, we're unbelievably excited to be bringing this magic to people. The EP comes with (if we say so ourselves) pretty damn phenomenal art by Jeanne Fourie - the same creative force behind the mesmerizing animation above.
Outside of this stellar debut EP, you can also look forward to Birthday Girl's live show, which looks set to be some magic of the highest order. Drop by the band's facebook if you want to keep trakc of where and when you can see "Rituals" conjured up on stage!