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12 Views of Beatenberg is here with a new video for “Camera”

Cape Town trio Beatenberg are very pleased to share details of their new album, 12 Views Of Beatenberg, set for release on the 7th of December 2018 through Island Records.

Broaching the album is the music video for ‘Camera,’ directed in Cape Town by Jarred Figgins.

Fronted by guitar-wieding Matthew Field, with Robin Brink on percussion and Ross Dorkin on bass, Beatenberg are a Cape Town-based trio of tinkerers drawing from the inspired body of South African pop sounds with whimsical insight. Their 2014 debut, The Hanging Gardens of Beatenberg LP was a sun-kissed, afro-rhythmic record that became wildly popular at home, inspiring them for the next 2 years toward their current release, 12 Views Of Beatenberg.

In early 2016, The Hanging Gardens garnered the attention of Mumford & Sons, who flew in for a first tour of South Africa. At first listen, they shoe-horned Beatenberg onto all their live line-ups and invited them into the studio to record the Johannesburg EP alongside Senegal’s Baaba Maal and Malawi-London fused The Very Best. “Those boys have serious chops!” remarked Marcus Mumford, with the track Wona standing as a glorious highlight. The album won an impressive seven South African Music Awards, with two tracks occupying #1 spots for 36 consecutive weeks. Hoping to enjoy the same warm reception in their continued journey abroad, 12 Views sees the band exploring new territories across the globe as well as within their musical selves.

“The 12 Views is mainly a reference (via division by a third) to Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mt Fuji. In Hokusai’s series of 36 prints, the mountain – which is a volcano – is represented as seen from 36 different positions in the surrounding region and throughout the seasons. What I like is how inventive and varied these ‘views’ are,” says Matt. ”I have lived in Cape Town almost all my life and while working on this album I instinctively and vaguely plugged Table Mountain into this scheme as a kind of Mt Fuji… In my mind Table Mountain became, very loosely, a symbol for a kind of constant, unavoidable but sometimes stifling awareness of one’s place in the world and history. This is maybe the most meaningful way that the title reflects concerns and considerations throughout the work.”

12 Views of Beatenberg takes this approach to task with tracks that are varied, curious and handsome, through an unpredictably South African nostalgia. Amidst twinkles, snares, hand claps, jazzy outroes, Charlie Brown theme-music interludes and the unmistakable Beatenberg vocal harmonies and scats, this is an album that can be appreciated anywhere, at any time, by anyone.

Evolving the balmy nuances that made bands like Vampire Weekend what they are, Beatenberg brings forth its own feeling of introspective warmth and universal deja vu with Camera, the first single and video release recorded in Cape Town and mixed in KwaZulu-Natal’s Margate.

Get Camera here.

Album tracklisting:

  1. Full Length Mirror
  2. Camera
  3. Aphrodite
  4. She’s Not Like That
  5. Common Time
  6. Dark Glasses
  7. Stamina
  8. Ode Slowed
  9. M3
  10. Stamina Vignette
  11. Ode To The Berg Wind
  12. Naomi
  13. Bowerbird
  14. Spirit Level
  15. I Won’t Take No For An Answer

Beatenberg are: Matthew Field (vocals/guitar), Robin Brink (drums), Ross Dorkin (bass).