The Sick-Leaves are gearing up for the
digital release of long awaited fourth album Breaking Away on
January 23rd 2012.
Breaking Away was originally
envisioned to be an EP but once completed clocked in at an explosive
twenty-nine minutes following the inclusion of the most recently written
song and first radio single Catfights In Bushes.
Catfights In Bushes
is by far one of the most energetic songs The Sick-Leaves has ever recorded.
Songwriter Eksteen Jacobsz describes the lyrics as being
“a metaphor for how often we get caught up in a tangle with other
people and how opportunities are made or lost with respect to how you
react to those encounters.”
Over the course of 2011 six tracks
off Breaking Away were tracked at SABC’s M5 and Openroom studios
with Darryl Torr and the remaining two tracks were recorded at Sting
studios with Matthew Fink. Matthew Fink, who had produced The Sick-Leaves
SAMA nominated first & second albums, mixed and produced Breaking
Away. According to Jacobsz
the recording process for Breaking Away was definitely the most difficult
to date. “The writing process was very easy and the songs were
written quite fast, but recording took much longer than what I anticipated.”
Tracking was done at Openroom Studios from January to March. An extra
track, Crying (Roy Orbison cover) was recorded during this period but
is not included on the album. This cover is available as a digital download
from The Sick-Leaves website.
Breaking Away
is a jubilant, victorious, uplifting experience.
The natural progression
is for Jacobsz to produce the next Sick-Leaves album due to the experience
gained through the recording process for this and the previous three
Sick-Leaves releases. Jacobsz reflects on how as a solo artist it was,
quite frustrating to get the sounds, arrangements and mixes right for
the demo album in a relative short amount of time, but then the recording
and mixing process took many months to reach completion.
This was the first album where Jacobsz
had the album title ready before any of the songs were written. The
phrase Breaking Away represented to him escapism. What
motivated Jacobsz when he wrote this set of songs was that there would
be no constraint placed on the songs as to whether they should be short
enough for radio play, whether any record label would be interested
to pick it up or whether it would make sense to mainstream critics compared
to previous releases. A big criterion was that the songs would be allowed
to follow their own path to completion during the songwriting process.
With the album title, Breaking Away,
playing around in his head, Jacobsz searched for images to personify
the words and make a bold, powerful statement. He stumbled across the
cover photograph online and immediately knew it was exactly the image
he was looking for. Jacobsz explains his excitement at finding the photograph,
“I couldn't believe my luck that the photograph hadn't been used before
apart from in National Geographic's Space issue. Space and especially
the space shuttle program have always fascinated me. I knew the Space
Shuttle program was coming to an end at the time and that it would be
an even more iconic and historic picture to use for a Sick-Leaves album
cover.”
The striking album artwork features
a photograph of space shuttle Endeavour blasting off from Kennedy Space
centre, Florida on March 11th 2008. It was captured by US
photographer James N. Brown (www.ov-103.com) in fitting with the power, boldness and energy
of the songs on this fourth release.
The photograph has been featured in
the special National Geographic "Space" issue of November
2008 (http://bit.ly/tn6OW9) and is one of the photographer’s
personal favourite photos to date with no post editing having been done
at all.
Brown was very happy for the photo to
be used as the album artwork for Breaking Away, saying, ”It's
a good feeling to have someone think so much of my work as to want to
use it for the cover of his CD. I was fortunate enough to photograph
the Shuttle program for 23 years. It was a big part of my life. I wish
Eksteen and The Sick-Leaves much success with the album.”
After turning the volume dial a notch
down on ‘Last Dance Of The Sugarplum Fairy, Jacobsz felt that
he wanted to record an album that sonically combined all the elements
of the previous three Sick-Leaves releases. “Breaking Away might
very well be the loudest set of songs I’ve recorded thus far. It was
my full intention when I went into the studio and I’m so pleased with
the variety of tones and the feel that came to be for each song. This
might be due to the fact that recording went on for such a long time
compared to the shorter time spent on recording for LDOTSF”.
Jacobsz asserts “Breaking
Away is for me a culmination of the past 7 years' experience
I've gained through recording music, playing it live and living.
For me it is the most enjoyable Sick-Leaves
album to listen to and also the most representative of the sound I am
after. It also closes a chapter in my musical career as I feel that
on the next album I will go for a totally different direction and feel
than the previous four. I don't want to fall into the trap of repeating
myself consequently I have set myself the challenge to re-invent my
own sound and to experiment with other alternative genres. If
it takes a few years or even a decade to find it, then so be it.”
Third album Last Dance of the Sugar
Plum Fairy was independently released in March 2010 following on
from the SAMA nominated first & second albums Tunnel Vision
and Stone The Crow in 2007 & 2009 respectively. Breaking
Away is the first Sick-Leaves album to be only digitally released,
in line with world wide trends, and will be available for sale on digital
stores such as iTunes, Amazon (as through AWAL) Cd Baby, O Music Store,
Look & Listen, Band Camp as well as through The Sick-Leaves website.
The Sick-Leaves is the solo project
of Eksteen Jacobsz, who wrote all the songs for Breaking Away
and recorded all the vocals, guitars and bass.
Wayne Kennith Pictor laid down the drums,
as was the case for the previous release.
|
84,823 MP3 tracks available @ R7 per track ($0.99) and growing daily!
(146 new tracks added this week)
. Click on 
play buttons to hear samples.
