Interview with ISO

Following their return to music, we interviewed ISO to chat the change in members, name and the potential for a new album.

ISO

The evolution of ISO has been staggering both locally and internationally. To what do you owe this constant motion?

We are always challenging ourselves musically, conceptually as well as pushing the boundaries in production. We like to be at the forefront of music, technologically as well as musically and this drive owes to us constantly evolving

From Isochronous to ISO, what led to the band’s name change?

Simple, most people could not pronounce it so we just shortened it.

After producing an impressive discography to boot, signing off with the Passages EP, one of South Africa’s busiest bands seemingly disappeared off the scene. What exactly led to this break?

We needed to really discover who we were as musicians as well as people so we decided to take a break from the scene, we had also overplayed the South African circuit and felt like it was time to focus more on songwriting than playing gig after gig. During our break we also welcomed a new drummer to the band.

In early 2015, you announced the departure of drummer Marko Benini. It certainly came as a shock to the fans. Did it come as a shock to you?

We weren’t really expecting it but I think it was for the best that he made that decision, Marko is still carrying on with music in his own entity. We now have Nic on drums and he is enjoying it big time!

Nic Mc Creadie joined ISO as the band’s new drummer shortly after the departure of Marko. Nick, did you find it difficult at first to find your footing or did it all come natural?

Yes! It’s never easy walking into something that has been going on for such a substantial amount of time. I’d even go out on a limb and say that we all kind of had to find our footing again. But the guys were absolute gentlemen and let me do my own thing till we were all on the same page.

Having gone back to playing shows all over South Africa, how have the crowds responded to the return of ISO?

We recently did a tour called “The Progressive Tour” which we performed all our most technical songs, the fans loved this as they could come watch some of their favourite songs of the band that they quite possibly have never seen live. We have also added a couple brand new songs into our set which have gone down very well.

You’ve recently released a 360-degree live session video for one of your most intimate songs, “Vice Versa”. Please tell us more about the video and the process behind it.

We filmed it with our friends at Popsicle Studios, we love it there and they always really make us feel at home. We released the first 360-degree live studio video of a South African band, and it was a very unique experience for us. We had to perform it in 1 take. It’s basically a ball of GoPro Cameras that catch every angle. We centered it in the room and then edited afterwards to stitch it all together. You can watch it on YouTube if you haven’t seen it yet. Just search ISO – Vice Versa.

With 2016 in full swing could we possibly expect a new ISO album?

Yes most definitely, we are already half way. We have been recording in Cape Town, Johannesburg and we will also record in Pretoria so it is quite a special one and we are all looking forward to getting it out to the fans.