Last day in California! I have learnt many things! JHB hardly has homeless Dresden people compared to SF & LA! Driving on the wrong side of the road is pretty crazy, but easy! Driving in snow is hardly different! Tahoe is beautiful! Vegas is fun for only 1 night, or if you have endless money! Small town America is like the Karoo with ghost mining towns! Tax isn’t included, & is different in every state! Eveytime you turn on the radio, Hotel California is playing. Hank Moody isn’t driving around in his black Porsche all the time! Dresden solo man on Venice Beach plays guitar solo’s 24/7 whilst on his fruit boots! West Hollywood is called ‘boytown’ for a reason I do not wish to disclose! SA has much prettier girls! Russian cab drivers ‘rig’ the meters! You pay for parking everywhere, except Vegas! Blue Bottle coffee is the best! Starbucks sucks badly, but the ‘free’ wifi is essentially what you are paying for. It’s always 4pm in LA, & the sunsets are beautiful! Angels & Kings is a damn rad club on Hollywood blvd with a plastic impala with AK 47′s coming out of it’s horns!!! Um, that’s about all I can say about that for now! Damn good times with Darren Leader Andrew Maskell Gregory Ross Carlin Wrighteous Mike Ryan Fray Findlay and a bunch of other crazy Noonga’s on the way!

It’s that time again… after spending 2 years touring non-stop, i am finally in the other place that i love so much; The Studio. “Second Album Woe’s” you might think, but really it’s turned out rather different i’d say. I have always said that making music, is the most fun a person can have. While this obviously excludes a lot of other of my favorite things to do, when it all comes together, it is in fact a wonderful feeling. We have been working full time since early 2010 on what is to be the follow up album to Collected Memories.

Yes, it’s different. It’s no longer just one, but now five. Five minds, ten hands, & ten ears. Im about to spill over with excitement for these songs to be out there, on the interweb, in your car’s, and on your iPod’s. It has happened before, where great albums are capable of dying a horrible death. And how will our’s be different? It won’t, we can’t guarantee listenership or a fan base bigger then what we have already…but we can guarantee that we have put absolutely everything into making this album, and i hear that very same sound in my favorite albums.

Where do we go from here? We can’t come out the same, no surely not! We have to do more, better and with a difference. This is what i am going to spend the next few months thinking about.

I’m not sure if you have ever been in an Anechoic Chamber of sorts, but its basically a room that is without (ane) any sort of reverb or even ambient sound (echoic). In other words, it is completely DEAD in there. There is absolutely NO room noise. It’s purpose is for testing microphones and speakers. I can’t really explain it, but it sure is the craziest place you will ever be in. Anyway, it’s a great place to hang out when we’re in studio and feeling like disappearing for a while. I like it there. Here’s the proof, by Greg Carlin:

Anechoic Crucifix

I have been admiring Sean Metelerkamp’s photos for a while now and was super stoked when he contacted us for a shoot. His ideas are so crazy, and his composition is so insane that if he shot this on a “point & shoot”…you would still get the same feeling from it. I’m a big fan, check out his portfolio @ Metal Box

How often do you get to travel along the beautiful coast line of Southern Africa, doing what you love doing every night… well, almost every night? Not very often. This is probably my 4th coastal tour, and was by far the best turn out and most succesfull tour i have been on in many ways. We started in Ballito at the Mr Price Pro, which was huge, and was really well supported…this was followed by a huge party with aKing in some dodgy club in Ballito….which ended up at our really pimpin hotel:) Andrew is so broke, he jumped off the balcony to get the money that Rob & Hunter were carelessly throwing off, while Snake and I were wrestling in the bathroom. Rob also managed to fall of a golf cart at high speed and crack his skull open. From Durban, we went on to Smithfield… a 1 horse town with a restuarant called Luigi’s (very Italian) well…not the restuarant, just the name. Best FILLET steak EVER! We had some wife-beater specials and called it a night. East London, well i never expected this…at all, 350 kids loving the music and the merch:) We ended up at Numb3rs? were all the cool kids hang out, and ManBearPig saved us from the muscles of some Tjona [noun; chaw-na]

Then we took a few days of leisure in Plettenberg Bay, after all we had been so busy and needed the break. Greg tanned, and the 4 of us did a good 5km run, it was rad…though, were still too fat for the beach. Next up was the Billabong Pro with aKing in Jeffreys Bay. Boom! Weather was miserable, and the last thing any of us felt like doing was playing, until we got up on stage and did a quick monitor mix (all on in-ears now) and noticed the crowd swell in numbers. The show actually turned out to be our best show of the tour and the night will remain forever in our memories:) haha… we went from here to the local hang out, The Lounge, it was PACKED and 7th Son were playing…rad! but too busy for us. Between the 2 bands, and sound engineers and managers and brand agents we found J-Bays best kept secret….”The Local Pub” with a dwarfed individual engineering some Kareoke (sp). The bar was closing and the DJ was done, until us LOUD individuals with only 1 plan in mind arrived. Soon Greg and Laudo were singing “Kaptein” by Kurt Darren and Hunter and I did our version of “Ice Ice Baby”…of course we all joined in for “I would do anything for love, by Meatloaf” Good times!

We felt like a few more days was deserved off, so on the way back from J-Bay we went passed the Bloukrans Bunji, and Greg and I enjoyed our CHICKEN MAYONAISE toasted sandwhiches. Until of course we got back home and spent the evening starring at those very sandwhiches. FmyL. Greg actually ended up in hospital.

From Plett, we did George…which was also unexpectadly rad! And then for the last leg of the beach tour, Cape Town. We havent played in CT since Coke Fest, but i never knew they missed us this much. We had 3 sold out shows, 3 days in a row. First at Club 91 in trendy Claremont. It was rad, we had big bouncers and a rad VIP lounge, the crowd recognized the songs from 5FM, but all danced the night away. Rudi and Andre from Ashtray Electric kicked it with us and we had a damn good time drinking coffee tequila, which no matter what anyone tells you…still is tequila! Next up Gordon’s Bay, small venue, but sold out. They actually said that outside “Zebra & Giraffe has SOLD OUT” haha…. to who? We had the schnitzel, it tasted like fish, Marinus had the chips, they tasted like fish…but he worked wonders with probably the smallest PA we have ever performed on!Big UP’s to you Marino!

Assembly! In my personal opinion, the ONLY real live music venue in South Africa. Blaise, and Pierre know how to run a venue professionally and effectively better than anyone else. Through a friend of ours Tracy Cohen, we have sorta got this thing going where by people with dissabilities have been coming to our soundchecks. You see, most venues have stairs, and even without, it is virtually impossible for a person in a wheelchair to see the stage. So Tracy and her friend Chaeli came along, with the help of all the Assembly staff, and got a lil different taste of Zebra & Giraffe. Pierre told us around 6pm that the show was completely sold out online, and he was already turning people away from the door….a bitter sweet feeling, as i knew many people didnt have tickets yet. Anyway, only motivation to return to this great venue and do it all over again…soon!

Darren and Marino had a flight to catch and were fetched straight from Assembly at 4:15 AM, yup… then! Marino had Kersfees, and Darren was off to America… the rest of us went back to our rad gay friendly, not so drunk-proof house in De Waterkant and slept for a while hoping to wake up feeling completely normal. Turns out Colesburg is really far away, so instead we drove the “Soccer Mom” van to Beaufort West were we found the Wagon Wheel and straight to Spur. Dont do a rib burger from Spur….ever! From Beaufort West, we were up early early and home safe and sound by that evening. We have a week or so off now, but August is a busy month…this blog sucks and if you read this far, you dont suck…see u somewhere…soon!

Zebra & Giraffe played at Back 2 Basix in Westdene on friday with our fellow music makers Fire Through the Window. They are a really cool band, and really cool people and i cant wait to play again with them in Durban next week. Rudi Jeggle shot some rad photos, despite not been able to get close to the stage and this is what it looked like…

This weekend we played two really big shows called Campus Invasion, one with aKing, Fokoffpolisiekar, and Tidal Waves at the Tuks Rag Farm in PTA, and then on Saturday at the beautiful Emmarentia Dam with aKing, HHP and Goldfish. This photo is from the dam where a good 8000 people piled in, and as you can see the weather held out. This was a lot of fun. Photo by Sean Brand.

The music video for Zebra and Giraffe’s third single off Collected Memories, Oxymoron was released today. Marcus Maschwitz shot the video, and I directed and edited. It was great fun, and i love creating something that you can really get into, and this is definately one of those projects. Although the video looks super smooth, it was actually shot on a Digital SLR stills camera at 10 and 5 frames per second which really suits the feel of the song. We shot around 39 000 photos and used approximately 15 000 in the edit. Make sure you watch it in high quality on the website or on Youtube click on the “watch in high quality” tab.

our Zebra & Giraffe album launch took place at the Johannesburg Millitary Museum, which could have gone down much better if the manager hadn’t pulled the plug on our performance as we were a little louder then the Howitzer in front of us. Nonetheless we gathered a lot of press around this, and everyone stayed and partied. We also did AMP with Herman Pretorius this evening, in front of this tank where Marcus shot the photo above. We have you in our thoughts constantly Herman!! Vrede!!

Meet the band boys of Zebra and Giraffe.