Pictured (from left to right): Lood van Niekerk, Michael Burke, Marcel van der Veen, Paul Twekye, Francois van Wyk. PHOTO: Supplied / Michael Burke
Local Stellenbosch band Uncle Spike is set to release what could be their last album, marking the end of the “‘Uncle Spike in Stellenbosch’ chapter”, according to band member and saxophone player Michael Burke.
“This is not the last album, hopefully, we will be back. We are just now in the stage of our lives where we are a bit scattered,” said Marcel van der Veen, guitarist for Uncle Spike.
The band members’ individual studies and careers, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic, have meant that they have dispersed away from Stellenbosch. This according to Burke, who explained that drummer Lood van Niekerk is currently studying in Oxford and bassist and rapper Paul Twekye is in Namibia, while lead singer Francois van Wyk and himself are in the Boland.
“I think that’s why this has been treated as the last project for Uncle Spike,” he said.
“Uncle Spike’s music is real in the sense that you can very much hear their South African roots and they don’t allow a particular genre to take complete hold of their output,” says Jean Jacques Marais owner of Tunes Studio in Stellenbosch. PHOTO: Supplied / Michael Burke
With Burke, the youngest member, graduating this year and leaving Stellenbosch, the band members are no longer living – and making music – in the same town.
“We’re all taking the next big steps in terms of our careers,” said Burke. “If one day we can come back together, and the funding and demand are there, we definitely will.”
“We’re all moving in different directions, our lives took us on different paths,” echoed Van Niekerk.
“Everything is a rat race,” said Lood van Niekerk, explaining how “reflections of adulthood” have partly inspired Uncle Spike’s new album. GIF: Sarah Hoek
What to expect
The new album comes two years after the band’s debut studio album, I in the Sky was released in March 2018, and was inspired by the events and circumstances of 2020. Undeterred by the nation-wide lockdown amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, the band wrote the new music and songs apart and sent it to each other over WhatsApp, according to Van der Veen.
“Each of us had a different experience this year and out of that came some frustrations, some joy and a lot of raw emotion. That raw emotion was channeled into the latest music,” he said.
“[Uncle Spike is] not scared of taking chances with songwriting,” said Jean Jacques Marais, owner of Tunes Studio in Stellenbosch, where the band has recorded previously. “They are always experimenting with their sound and introducing unconventional instruments into their brand of indie rock.”
Uncle Spike’s previous album, “Just Take Care of Yourself”, was released in 2019.
Uncle Spike began when the band members, who were all living in Wilgenhof men’s residence, started playing music together as friends and writing original songs, said Burke.
“We were playing in each other’s rooms and at culture evenings,” he said. “Uncle Spike was very much a university passion project.”
One fan, Yusrah Davids, has been following Uncle Spike since she heard them play at one such culture evening in her residence, Huis Ten Bosch, in 2017.
“I associate their music with good times hanging out with my friends. I can’t think of Stellenbosch without thinking of them and their music,” she said.