Photography: mark reitz
got from Levi’s was pretty tight (in film terms) so we had to make it work with a good idea. We had so much rain on the day of the shoot it ended up only being like 4 hours worth of actual shooting. There were things we planned but couldn’t happen because of the rain interference. It came out alright though. Andre: Well Brain form Fly on the Wall was responsible for the concept and we had one rainy day to shoot it which ended up in only bout 4 hours of shooting time. It seemed like the old man in the band (Rudi) had trouble keeping up with the revolving camera… do you think that the fact that he is always photographed with a cigarette in his mouth has anything to do with it? Rudi: I’m camera shy. Andre: Haha. I always take the piss out of Rudi. But in those two fields im all out of wit. Give us a breakdown of the members, what they do and where they are from? Rudi: Well, we kind of lost a member. Wouter (keys), who is from Paarl, has a pretty serious family business that he is working for and playing in a band just wasn’t really a viable option. So he has left us know and we’re going to replace him with a sampler. Then Reg Nel (bass) and Rupert Nel (drums) are brothers from Bellville. They went to school with me and that’s where I met them. Andre just kind of floated into our lives – met him when we were both on tour together with Fokofpolisiekar. I was roadie for them and he was taking a holiday with the guys who were selling the merchandise. I read online that you are firmly set in the belief that a bottle of red wine can solve anything and that making music is the most fun you can have. Now the bottle of red wine goes without saying… but making music is not always fun,
when is not fun? Rudi: That thing is outdated. There is a new one on the way. Andre: I think song writing can get extremely frustrating sometimes. After a while u are pretty creatively drained and nothing seems to be working. Irritation seems to take its place then. Now I have heard so many people compare your music to this and that, how do you feel about the comparisons and do you actually want to sound like another band besides yourself. Where would you say the roots lie of the Ashtray Electric sound? Rudi: I think most people completely miss the plot sometimes. We’re not set on sounding like any one in particular either. Sure, there are bands out there we love to listen to and that we adore but there is no plan of becoming the South African Editors or whatever. The roots of our sound are pretty diverse. I mean, Rupert never listened to anything else than Metallica when he was a teenager. And Andre hates the music that I was into when I was his age. So it’s a bit of a group dynamic I guess. Andre: Of course one would like to have no comparisons, but unfortunately you can’t escape it and will always be influenced by others as you were growing up. I think we have strong ties to the likes of Interpol, Editor and Placebo. How would you compare the JHB and the CT music scene, what would you say are the key differences or similarities? Rudi: They like metal and screamo type stuff more than we do. Further than that I have no real knowledge about the JHB scene. Andre: People. Cape Town is actually a town while JHB is a city. I think here it’s the same people the whole time which can makes things feel saturated where as in JHB I feel the fact that there are more people there, it tends to relax things down and leaves some breathing space. If that made any sense