I’m sure you’ve often heard of the music success stories on the internet. Millions of bands fighting for attention and only a handful ever get heard (often because of strategic plans in place from nifty managers)…. This stories a little different.

Paul’s plan was and is very simple - to write good songs and record a beautiful album that he could be proud of. He put the album online after being advised other musician. He began to get emails from people around the world connecting with his songs. This followed with local radio stations requests. Now his songs are playing in Australia, UK, Hungary, France, Italy, Japan, USA and Canada. That has lead to international record labels hearing the album, wanting to be involved – the most recent release being in Japan. One of his songs has also inspired an animation director to create a video for ‘fireflies lullaby’. It should appeal to the dreamer in all of us.

Perhaps sometimes, good music can find it’s way to people on its own accord.

Paul’s first single to be released in South Africa is Angel’s Collide.

You can hear it being played on:

Heart FM
KFM
MFM
UCT Radio
East Coast Radio
Helderberg
Bush Radio

The MAXNORMAL.TV ‘GOOD MORNING SOUTH AFRICA’ album is a wild and crazy rap journey through the deep, dark depths of Africa.

“This is the best South African rap album ever made. If you don’t believe me, go read HYPE magazine and think about it.”
-Max Normal

“You can’t f**k with this sh*t, it’s dark and different…pay attention or be like: f**k it I missed it!”
-Yo-landi Visser

Phoenix is a talented soul and R&B singer who is set to take South Africa by storm in 2008.

Originally from East London Phoenix grew up with a passion for performing. After visiting South Africa for a holiday he realised it was the place where he wanted to develop his music. After moving to Cape Town in 2000 he started on an acting career and was the lead in adverts such as Hunters Dry and Mercedes. Alongside this he focused on his songwriting and began performing around the city.

His solo material caught the eye of Runway Music who are very excited to work with Phoenix. With a warm and sensual voice he takes influence from his motown idols Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. His songs tell witty stories about growing up and learning life lessons.

His debut album will be release on 08/08/08

Look out for him later in the year…..

Blunt Magazine (February 2008)
Rating 90%
‘People should start opening their eyes and their ears, to see and hear that we have talented bands that sound original. This is an eclectic, inspiring release’.

Men’s Health (January 2008)
‘The music is great, that is more than enough reason to get it’.

SL Magazine (January 2008)
Rating 70%
‘ These acts straddle musical boundaries in a surprisingly smooth spin session which pays sultry, thoughtful tribute in equal parts to South African ciphers, suburban rock garages, smoky afrojazz joints, kwaito bashes ekasi and ragamuffin dancehalls. We’ve come a long way. And it just sounds so good’.

Cape Argus (January 2008)
‘ Phrased Differently boasts a kick ass line up of top draw local talent. Screw artistic segregation. Welcome to the future’.

Mail & Guardian (December 2007)
‘Its mission is far more utopian: ultimately it’s about letting the divergent South African musical voices speak for themselves’.

Cape Times (December 2007)
‘This compilation straddles different music genres to break genre limitations. The artists have been handpicked by the Mail & Guardian. Their faves include The Black Hotels indie pop and Kwani Experience complete the trip with an Afro-jazz tune’.

One Small Seed (December 2007)
‘Phrased Differently indeed. This collection is populated by the most exciting and, for the most part, under exposed SA artists. This album is a well-intentioned and well-executed stab at raising awareness raised about these artists’.

www.southafrican.co.uk
‘This album is as diverse as the nation it represents, South Africa. Jazz, rock, reggae, hip-hop, spoken word and kwaito all make appearances’.

Music Industry Online
‘ In this respect the M&G alongside Runway music, have got it right’.

Entertainment Iafrica
‘It’s releases like Phrased Differently that makes one so very proud to be South African’.

“Strange, Freddie thought as she listened, music has become one big sound. Nothing is discernible anymore.” The line is out of Barbara Adair’s new postmodern novel End (Jacana, 2007) but anybody struggling to navigate the contemporary South African music-scape will relate to what Freddie’s talking about as she cruises through Jozi: the monocultural nightmare lurking beneath the Rainbow Nation myth. As Freddie puts it, “No one listens to music anymore. It’s accessible to all. It is just one sound that is always available.”

Phrased Differently has the antidote. Take its title: different to what exactly? That “one big sound” that fuels the conveyor belt of compilations selling uniformity, either through “exotic” African tourist postcards such as The Great South African Trip, or segregationist sales pitches such as Ons Rock Jou Taal and those branded Bump clubber’s guides.

Rather than attempt to categorise the contemporary South African musical experience into either easily digestible consumer cliché, the team of Mail & Guardian journalists curating Phrased Differently juxtapose some of the divergent musical voices shaping South African society together on one CD. It’s a deceptively simple curatorial ploy that challenges you to celebrate difference over uniformity, flow over unities and to shelve your generic prejudices and actually listen.

Listen to the mash-up strategies at play in Sibot and Spoek Mathambo’s whimsical electro-rap opener Bang on the Drum. Moby on crack, anyone? Okay, maybe not, but hey, part of the pleasure of listening to this primer lies in finding your own ways of navigating these mobile arrangements.

Perhaps it starts with joining the dots between current progressive rock poster boys Mars Volta and our own forgotten 1970s favourites Freedom’s Children in the genre-surfing deconstruction drive of the Blk Jks’ Transit Camp.

Or tuning into the unmistakable Sophiatown jazz nostalgia fuelling saxophonist Moses Khumalo’s Celebrate Mzansi, and then wondering where the hell you’ve heard his name before. (An obituary: “Sax star commits suicide at 27”.) Or maybe it’s decoding the cathartic call to consciousness in Tumi & the Volume’s altrock filtered rap Signs.

Make no mistake, juxtaposing such diverse sounds as Rantoboko’s acoustic soul hop smile Kimba Kure and Magarimbe’s kwaito smash hit Sister Bethina alongside the alternative indie rock of The Wild Eyes Breakdown and the Black Hotels’ Johnsson Mann is ambitious. But that’s the point.

Will some listeners hit that fast forward button when Paul Hanmer’s chromatic jazz joint Oxtinato segues into Afrikaans neo-Beat poet Toast Coetzer and his Buckfever Underground combo’s stream of consciousness post-rock poem Die Wortel van Kwaad? Probably.

But this primer isn’t meant for them. It’s meant for those listeners frustrated by the homogeneity of any Rainbow Nation musical recipes. Sama-winning Hanmer aside, the roster of artists populating Phrased Differently are hardly household names.

But don’t presume this means Phrased Differently is buying into any “mainstream vs underground” divide.

Its mission is far more utopian: ultimately it’s about letting the divergent South African musical voices speak for themselves.

http://www.chico.mweb.co.za/art/2007/2007nov/071123-phrased.html

Max Normal and his crew have been touring around South Africa playing some crazy shows and building up his cult following.