Run Around The Forest Where Your Spirit Lives
The Deathrettes is a four-piece garage groove band hailing from Cape Town, and as an onset, ties together the members of former garage outfits like The Future Primitives and Black Lung. The Deathrettes started in early 2015, pulling together a dynamic line up that consists of Dylan Rooibokkie (lead vocals, guitar), Warren Fisher (rhythm guitar), Michael Clarke (bass), and Charl Stemmet (drums). That being said, they are no strangers to live shows and Cape Town’s ever evolving Psychedelic Rock Scene.
The Deathrettes recorded ‘Animal‘with multi award winning producer, Theo Crous at the legendary Bellville Studios. After recording and mixing ‘Animal‘ to a satisfying crescendo, Theo assigned the mastering duties to Rogan Kelsey at Kelsey Mastering in Johannesburg. Following the technical, Simeon van den Bergh designed the artwork for ‘Animal‘ and created a cover poignant enough to outline the various twists of the debut – the hunger, the exertion, there’s no way around it. There’s a predator prowling in the midst, securing territory, and baring its teeth like a death threat.
‘Animal’, as a debut single, is a reckoning of sorts. A coming together of two seasoned bodies. The city and forest intertwined in a mesh of modern day garage and 60s psych. The vines lie in affluence, sprouting thorns as they grow. Herein lies the lineage of Man. His passions, instincts, and sensual delights – what he desires, chases, and refines to devour. It’s the carnal knowledge of flesh, but where do the roots take hold? Where do they come from? One side mirrors the other. The tendrils are cultivating a strain of symmetry. Keep that in mind as the song’s temperament circuits around the prime motif: Animalism.
The drums hail the pace and grief of the beast, and never before has the onset of a threat been so inviting. Rhythm joins lead and the guitars echo and moan in unison, pouring through the trees like beams of ebbing light. In that sunset, the city shadows the forest, the jungle eclipses the street, and both these worlds blend into one, uniting the primal urge with its modern day equivalent. It becomes evident that a timeline of instinct leads to a lifetime of devotion. Animal| Animal| I love your soul| I’m with you.
The foundation of ‘Animal’ grooves through a spellbinding beat, a rhythm and lead to surrender to, and a voice that charms its way down slopes of clever verses, wailing as it were, down the pitfall of a chorus that seems to grow and grow until a scream is the only thing that will appease the beast. ‘Animal‘, as a debut, shapes the bedrock of a solid four-piece enterprise. One that will not only dig its claws into the industry, but teem with the blood drawn from its motif.
