11: Catch Up
Morning world.
It’s been years since my last post. Literally. Well a year. Well part of a year. It’s been a while…You get the point.
In the time that I’ve been gone so much has happened. I’ve met Linkin Park and a whole lot of their awesome fans, Done a whole lot of recording and mixing for the EP, and I’ve taken a trip to the land of traffic and crime with the ginger.
Joburg was lots of fun. Dancing on high ways (Just for the record, this is a load of fun. If you guys have so much traffic there, I don’t understand whai [why] this hasn’t become a daily pass-time), almost getting arrested (literally), and klapping the gym of course. ‘Cause when you’re in Joburg so as the Joburgians do. Okay that last one didn’t happen. (more…)
Fore(front)word
Good morrow, all!
Welcome to the resurfacing of Forefront!
It’s been quite a while, but I’m back, and we’re back to give you a treat.
For a good couple of months people would be like “Hey man, how is the band?” And I’d just be like, “Uuuuh, yeah it’s going great, we’re busy finishing off an EP.” And have nothing to show for it.
But now there’s a song 😐
And a super cool bonus 😐
And photies 😐
I’m going to start with the photies. On top of the fact that we’ve had a whoooole load of material to track and release, we still did some shoots and put a bit of a compilation together on our website gallery. In some of the photos, we don’t even look THAT stupid 🙂 #checkitout #YOLO (more…)
Fun in the Sun
Well heeeeey there everybody! Hope you’ve all been well doing your thing and having a good time and lots of fun in the sun, for summer is cloooose by and soon we’ll all be frolicking on the beach together and be happy. In the sun.
So its been a little while since you’ve seen Forefront on your newsfeed, which is good news and bad news. Neutral news. Bad news because interacting with all you cool cats is a huge part of what we’re all about, and keeping you in the loop is pretty important as far as we’re concerned. On the good side, however, its not because we don’t love you! We’ve been busybusybusy recording, mixing, getting things organised on Forefront’s front, as well as exams and other work that we’ll all doing. However, at the rate we’re going, we are setting a vague HB pencil date of releasing our hugely anticipated (by us) First & Foremost in November! Yeah! We’re all still lank excited about the project, and we hope you are too. And, in a month and a bit, you’ll have a little something to keep us by your side. And in your ear holes.
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Thesdhei
Soliek, time flies, and stuff. The term ends tomorrow. Fame is done and dusted. My hair’s grown a bit. Crazy stuff. I’m really looking forward to a little break, cozliek, busy bee and whatnot. But an idle bee gathers no pollen, as they say, and honey is a beverage best served while the iron is hot. Or something.
In the spirit of all that, we’re kicking off tracking next week at long lastly. This is good, because it means music. Our music, specifically. It’s a step closer to your ears, and we’re quite happy about that. We’ll undoubtedly keep you updated with pictures of Taylor on his phone, or other important steps of the recording process.
We’re also meeting up with the very awesome members of Soldier today. Hopefully we’ll be taking the stage together soon for a show with more of our kinda vibe to it. I’ll keep my puns to a minimum for the meeting, apparently it’s bad for PR. JK lol, that’s not happening. Puns are like water, and I’ll be dammed if I stop letting them flow. Teehee.
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Politics
Heyheyhey! So on the off chance that you didn’t realize, its nearing the end of August…which means the beginning of September is approaching! Which means that Spring is approaching! Which means that after spring’s undecided phase of playing hard-to-get with the sun, WARM WEATHER IS ON ITS WAY! And its about time too – this winter has been particularly cold, so props to everybody who has survived. But the days of shivering, shaking and shrinkage will soon be over. Rous has confessed that he’s been looking a bit white and pasty recently, and is more than excited to hit the beach and have fun in the sun.
So we here at Forefront have noticed we’ve been acting a little bit like a band of politicians: We’ve shamelessly plugged the release of our ‘First & Foremost’ demo, said we’ve been working hard producing the drums and bass, said we’ve made alleged plans to track vocals and guitar… But nobody’s seen any promised delivered quite yet. Well, truth be told, there is NO demo to look forward to, its all been a fabrication.
Mmmmmmmmhhhhhmmmmmmmmm.
Truthy-truth be told, there actually IS a demo to look forward to, but we haven’t had the time to begin tracking the guitars and vocals quite yet as we’ve all been furiously rehearsing for what is most definitely our biggest gig yet. Like, this is pretty big. Its so big, in fact, that we’ve had to hire out an entire school hall to pull this event off. Its so big, in fact, that we’ve had to add a completely new element in form of live acting, dancing, and choir singing with a cast of over 50 people! Its SO big, in fact, that we’ve decided to add piano, saxophone, clarinet, trumpet AND EVEN BASS-GUITAR to our sound!
The Weather
Well hey there everybody! Hope you’ve been keeping well, warm and wonderful this fine winter morning. As usual, its cold as balls today, but the sun’s out to compensate for it. Much like the weather, Forefront too is a little cold as balls – but don’t worry, the sun will be out soon.
We’ve finally got our drum and bass recordings back from SAE after our resident diva and engineer Kenni Burnell thought it would be best to withhold them for a few weeks as he had lost all of the CDs in his car and had nothing else to bump & bang through his hood. Now in possession of these sessions though, Forefront’s next move is to start tracking guitars (ideally next week or so) and then vocals after that. It’s the calm before the storm, and this one’s a hurricane.
In other news, we’ve also gotten our photos back from the youngest-in-charge, Robin Taylor Photo, an awesome and madly talented photographer and good friend. And as predicted, they are indeed looking very sick. We’ve shared a couple of cool ones on the facetubes, but more will come with the release of the demo.
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Looking gewd.
Yello.
This be the Greek again. So as Im sure you heard… We were in studio last weekend recording the drums and bass guitar for our amazing new Hiphop compilation album. I hope you are all as keen for these gangsta beats as I am. If this does not tickle you fancey, dont be afriad. We have not convinced Rous to wear baggy jeans and basketball jerseys, and so have decided the Hiphop is not the direction to go in.
We have however started working on our Alternative Rock EP: First & Foremost. Filled with music you know and love. And things you’ve never heard.
We are very proud of how our music is sounding, and we cant wait for you to hear the final product… We’re also quite keen to hear the final product. Here’s a picture from the live room in the studio where Rous and I spent most of our waking hours playing our hearts out. It was emotional. Even though Nick was not able to join us, as he was busy being a fairy in the town of Graham, he did manage to send us some long and meaningful words of inspiration (Clearly the Shakespeare’s doing him good) that touched our heartstrings and made us perform as if we had at least one fan looking forward to our music. Taylor then informed me we have at least three. so now I’m happy.
For the record…-ing
Today is Monday. After a fairly atrocious week (for me at least), things managed to pick up this past weekend in the joy and accomplishment departments. If you’ve been following up on us, as I hope you have been, you’ll know that I’m talking about our time spent in studio on Saturday and Sunday recording tracks for our EP, First and Foremost.
This paragraph was going to be about recording, but now it is about me passing my driver’s, which is what happened earlier today. Breathe in deeply. In your mind’s eye, imagine a strategically shaved orang-utan in semi-formal clothing break dancing. This is as close a mental image of me after my test as it is possible to have. Cherish this image. Keep it close to your heart and call upon it in times of hardship. This is my gift to you.
This paragraph is going to be about recording. Thanks to our homie4life Kenneth Burnell (AKA Kenni), we were able to spend some more time in SAE’s Neve studio. Haven’t heard of it? It’s pretty underground. Legitimately. Around two stories, I’d approximate. The Neve is one of SAE’s finest and largest studios, and we’ve grown somewhat of a soft spot for it.
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The Coldbert Report
Alright well, I’m a little bit sick but otherwise in a good space to write a little splurge (I didn’t think ‘splurge’ was an actual word until my blackberry didn’t underline it as misspelled like right now) about what’s currently cooking in Forefront’s kitchen.
Firstly, if you’re in Cape Town and you’re all like “uuugh its so cold here its raining its freezing I wanna go somewhere warm its too cold naaaaaaww”, which may or may not have reflected my very own thoughts/public exclamations recently, you should stop and think about how lucky we are to live in Cape Town where even in Winter there’s some lovely sunshine and vitamin D goodness all up on your skin. You should really stop and take a second to think about all the truly unfortunate droves of people chilling up in GRAHAMSTOWN for the Arts Festival where the weather is severrrrrrrely chilly. I’m currently up performing in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and let me tell you, I’d dig to swing by Cape Town (just a chilled 12 hour bus ride) for a bit of warmth. Also, hit me up if you’re in Grahamstown and have access to a heater or fireplace. Or even bodyheat. I’m very cold.
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“Untitled” (Your Cure For The Monday Blues)
Gooooooood Monday everybody! Crawling out from the hole he once came from, once again, it’s time for you to hear a word or two from… Me.
Hope you all had a legendary weekend, and that for those of you that are on a decent holiday, that you’re enjoying the nuts out of that. Big news for today’s blog… (Drumrolls, confetti, fireworks and a collection of your female relatives dancing to a Beyonce number) THE SONGLIST. While the weekend was going down I managed to take an epic trip into Jason’s schedule to put down ideas and pre prod tracks for the final song. He then slapped some synth and drums on ‘dem tracks and it’s actually starting to take some good shape on tape (I’m practising this whole “rhyming” thing, I’ve heard it’s good for writing lyrics). Hopefully you’ll think it sounds as cool as I do. The song is currently under the name, “Untitled”. Creative, yes, but if lyrics take enough shape to throw any special words at it, I’ll schwing those words your way.
So here it is, in no particular order. (more…)
Greekings
Greekings Greetings.
Hope you all are shwell. For all of you awaiting the release of our currently nonexistent EP, I have some good news for you. But first, let me tell you all about what an EP is… cause my friends are slower than most, and don’t seem to understand.
An EP (these days) is a round piece of plastic in a somewhat minimal selection of packaging. This plastic, when placed in hipster devices such as CD players and Mac Book Pros, spins around a lot and by the power of lasers (FIRING MY LASER) [That thing you use to annoy cats when you have too much free time] numbers start changing on a screen and music starts to appear from speakers. These plastic rings will soon (probably in not too soon) be available to you and that crazy old lady that lives next door for a small nominal fee. I am also fairly sure I heard your granny mention how she wants one, so you better buy her a few. Grannys love EPs. Although in their day they were vinyl, and none of them contained dubstep.
Firstly: We are going into studio next weekend! 😀 The ginger and myself are very keen to put our rhythm onto tape. This will put us one step closer to bringing you the magic final product.
Forefrontal
Greetings.
While things have been pretty hectic for us over here with the ginger and myself all up in the varsity exams, we didn’t want to let that affect our relationship with you. So we thought now would be a good time to shower you with Forefrontal stuff. So with our website out (Stuff Count: 1) we thought there are some more things we should be letting you know about.
Right now, while I type this, we’re actually putting our highly developed procrastinating skills to action by means of a band practice. We’ve been working on our set for Mercury on Monday (Stuff count: 2), and it’s sounding pretty epic. Come through and check it out. Bands start at 10.
I also thought I should share …for all of you who spend your free time tracking down the actual location of Nick’s house… we have some good news: Our YouTube channel is here! (SC: 3) This is a much better way to spend you free time, guaranteed. You can take my word for it; I’ve been to Nick’s house. On the other hand, he did mention that he does enjoy picking up phone numbers off the stage after shows. So don’t forget to throw him yours on Monday (Females preferably [60:40 ratio]). (more…)
Catch Up
Alriiiiiight, so its been a couple of days since we’ve launched the website, and so far so good! We’ve received some great feedback from fans and it seems that okes are digging the site, which is cool. The site itself is one of those wordpress thingy things that Jason has altered and changed and personalised – we think it looks pretty sick, and we hope you do too.
To be honest, the launching of the website has been the most exciting thing that’s happened in a little while – last gig we played was at Zula a couple of weeks ago (which went very well), and otherwise its been all quiet because our good ol’ rhythm section have varsity exams. But myself and Taylor have taken the time to work on some new material that we think is sounding rad, so that’s productive at least. We’re playing at Mercury on Monday, which we’re lank excited about, and may throw in that new stuff I was referring to now now, so come through and listen to the mentioned new stuff and tell us what you think.
Forefront Band 