music

The Plastics - Shark

Local, Pop
Shark

Produced by award winning international producer Gordon Raphael, Shark has been a year in the making and has seen The Plastics experimenting with their own creative processes and discover different sounds, styles and production and recording techniques.
 
“It’s come out as a collection of music that is difficult to place in any particular time period, but as a whole, it feels like music from an era gone by that’s breaking into the 21st century.” says bassist Karl Rohloff.
 
In January 2010 The Plastics flew in Raphael from Berlin and recorded the album at Sound & Motion Studios in Cape Town: “We’ve been lucky enough to have the expertise and top-class environment of Sound and Motion Studios to make our ideas come to life.  Fuzzy and the guys have been really awesome and have contributed in a big way towards the end product.” says Rohloff.

The Plastics on working with Gordon Raphael:
 
“Working with Gordon was almost surreal.  The fact that he agreed to come all the way down to the bottom of the world and work with us, speaks hugely of Gordon’s desire for discovering new challenges. 
 
One would think that it would be intimidating working with a guy of his caliber and experience, but his relaxed, joke-a-minute manner disarmed any nerves we had.  He brought in the old school mentality to our recording – if it sounds good, it is good and his favourite saying when asked to do something was “That’s easy… it’s only 2 buttons.”  The Gordotronic blueprint for unusual but beautiful sounds is all over SHARK.” Karl Rohloff.
 
Gordon Raphael on working with The Plastics:
 
"When I first landed in Cape Town, I was super happy to be away from the snow, ice and minus 15 degree weather in Berlin, but I really didn't know what to expect from The Plastics when we actually hit the studio.
 
I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that they had plenty of great songs, and that the individual musicians were really talented. Good, rocking players always makes things faster and cooler in recording sessions, plus they were open to some suggestions I was having for certain tones and attitudes within their music. Sometimes they took on my ideas- even let me create some synthesizer collages here and there- but there were some things I would say, and they'd just laugh and say "no way!", which is great because it shows they have their own strong ideas and are ready to defend them.

All in all The Plastics showed me a great time in South Africa, my first time there, and to boot we made a really outstanding record in SHARK, which I have been telling everyone about. Even though we come from very different backgrounds, there was no problem at all in communicating, since we speak a very common language in guitars, vocals, bass and drums!"
– Gordon Raphael.


Release Date : 31 Jul 2010