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Benguela

Brydon Bolton (double bass), Alex Bozas (guitar), Ross Campbell (drums)

Benguela have been playing improvised music together for over fifteen years and have just successfully crowd funded their 5th full length album, due for release in early 2014. Every show they play is a spur of the moment creative cesspool that straddles both the ambient and angular. Their collaboration with Tony Cox won the SAMA award for Best Instrumental Album. They have also collaborated with cultural anarchist Koos Kombuis and internationally renowned poet Breyten Breytenbach. They have played most of the music festivals around the country more than once, including the North Sea Jazz Festival, Oppikoppi, Splashy Fen, Up The Creek and the Standard Bank Grahamstown Arts Festival as part of the New Music Indaba.



The name Benguela was taken from the cold current running up the West Coast of Southern Africa and reflects both the flowing nature of the music as well as being geographically representative of where the band came together and the climate in which they live.



“People think of improvised music as Jazz because it has been marketed as Jazz. A lot of performers you can’t classify get put into Jazz, but Jazz has a style, rules and common practices, and Jazz musicians improvise within those boundaries. Improvised music - true improvised music goes beyond that. It has no preordained language. It entirely creates it’s own form and genre. It just creates, which is beautiful. What’s interesting about an improvising band is that everyone in it is changing all the time, listening to new music, seeing new things, experiencing new emotions, developing.. so your perspective on life is changing. And because you’re never playing the same chords or singing the same lyrics, you’re never acting: it’s always a true and immediate expression of who you are.”



BRYDON BOLTON (Double Bass) has recorded and performed with many projects including Hilton Schilder, Robbie Jansen, Bomvu, Fred Kuit & Kopano, Blacky Swart, Frank Mallows (Adamastor), Chris Letcher & Matthew v.d. Want, Niklas Zimmer, ‘ELX’ with the late great trumpeter Alex Van Heerden and together with Derek Gripper as the Sagtevlei trio, has scored the music for Jackie Job’s dance “Spirit” which toured to Dusseldorf and has more recently been touring world wide with Yael Farber's “Mies Julie”. He has recorded with his own Brydon Bolton Trio and the critically acclaimed Acoustic Knot with Mark Fransman. He teaches double bass at the Beau Soleil music center.



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Forests of Sound

Benguela: Cape Town Improv Trio

Read "Benguela: Cape Town Improv Trio" reviewed by Mick Raubenheimer


The ambient, chugging drone becomes slow frothing waves on which a misty guitar loop bobs. The ocean scape is cloudy--blurred browns and deep, shifting blues. The droning bass strings become clear as they pluck into focus, percussion slipping in like sudden, calculated sprays of foam. Alex Bozas' guitar introduces matt flashes, like sampled photographs of urban scenes--everyday transactions between people and streets; automobiles carrying mystery packages; sun dried smiles. Ross Campbell's drums conduct the flow of energy between bass and ...

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"By the time the band bring the album to a close with Spitzkop, it has become clear that Benguela have recorded one of the finest South African albums of 2010." - Lloyd Gedye (M&G)

"The stuff of headphone reverie." - Mikedotcom (Muse Mag)

"as likely to be dark, dense and churning as ramblingly, languorously, billowingly atmospheric" - Richard Haslop

"fuck me with the still-frozen head of Walt Disney – the new Benguela CD is stupendously good!" - Brandon Edmonds (Mahala) Benguela: Sui/Chopsui (Open Record) “The latest from these Capetonian rhythm rebels is a humdinger, a smorgasbord of beats, riffs, intense grooves, melodic signatures and musical textures, all carefully captured on one of the most atmospheric albums of the year.” - Pretoria News review by Craig Canavan

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Adrift

Self Produced
2014

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Bush Radio Live

Self Produced
2012

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Black Southeaster

Self Produced
2010

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Sui

Self Produced
2003

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Digital Inability

Self Produced
2001

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Sputnik

Self Produced
1998

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