WATCH: Beatenberg release Aphrodite visuals
JOBURG – Beatenberg releases Aphrodite music video alongside Tresor.
12 Views of Beatenberg is the dizzyingly colourful album by South Africa’s most exciting new export, Beatenberg. Fronted by Matthew Field, Beatenberg draw from the vast works of South African left-field pop sounds.
“Coming from a post-rainbow nation generation of musicians, I guess we play our part in a new South African-ness, incorporating various identities while being mindful of the country’s many influences. As with South Africa’s recent wave of successes (beyond its own boundaries) such as John Wizards, Jeremy Loops, Alice Phoebe Lou and Dope Saint Jude, we want to play our part in reinventing and evolving what South African music is and can sound like, regardless of its controversial history of separation. We, like our peers, want to do that fully on our own terms. There seems to be more eyes on our music scene than ever before, and that’s really exciting,” Field said.
Field said 12 Views of Beatenberg is a reference 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.
“The mountain is sometimes snowy, sometimes fiery, sometimes pale, sometimes just an outline; sometimes the mountain is the central focus of the image, but sometimes it is just a little triangle on the horizon of a completely separate scene. 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,” he said.
The group released the music video for Aphrodite with fellow South African artist, Tresor and it’s the perfect introduction to Beatenberg for the uninitiated.
Watch the Aphrodite music video below:
