Cape Town, South Africa

The next stop in the world adventure brought us to almost the entire opposite part of planet Earth we had been not 3 weeks before. Here we were blessed with many gifts and faced some challenges, but the content ended up being as unique and inspiring as the trip itself did. Needless to say we got a ton of instruments, from drums and harps to a 3 piece choir library.

The session iteslf was planned by Shane Roberts and myself over the course of 2 or 3 weeks: instruments, contracts, booking, recording sheets, it was a fun and crazy challenge to look back to. First 2 days were split between a small but very well insulated studio in the heart of Cape Town, where we sampled a Uhadi and a PBC pipe flute that sounded incredible and we didn’t have time to sample more deeply, and some very unique sounding plucked strings and percussion instruments. The next day was at a big room a few blocks from there, at Milestone studios. This was my first time working with an analog console. An old Neve with a ton of history and character. And now my second time in charge of mics, but didn’t have time to mix it. That was in the masterful hands of Sam McCormick and Rebecca from South African studio partners. The last two days we recorded the women, men and group choirs. This was a unique challenge since sampling was a very unfamiliar workflow for everyone involved, and we had a small time window to record all 3 choir groupings. But the collection I believe speaks for itself!