Zebra & Giraffe
- What kind of music? Theatre
- Their website
- Zebra & Giraffe is an alternative rock band in South Africa. The band’s debut album, Collected Memories, was released on 5 May 2008.
History
Greg Carlin
Carlin grew up in Midrand where he attended Irene Primary before progressing to high school at Midrand High, which he graduated in 1999. Carlin first realised his passion for music after receiving a drum kit as a gift at the age of twelve. While at school, Carlin played in a short-lived band called MSG (1997-1999) – the name of an additive found in food products they took off a chip packet. After school, he went on to study Fine Arts at Tuks from 2001-2004, and also completed his honours degree, though he did not pursue fine art further.During his time at university, Carlin took singing lessons for several months and also bought tutorial CDs from the US. While at university, Carlin was the bassist and vocalist for the band White Lie (2004-2005), a side project of the punk band Remedy. In spite of a radio hit called “Runaway”, the band’s run was brief and they broke up because the other band members wanted to focus on varsity. After varsity, Carlin decided to travel and on his return worked intermittently as a contractor at Standard Bank during 2005 to 2007. He taught himself the guitar (his favourite instrument), as well as piano/keyboard, bass and drums (the only instrument he was ever trained in).
Carlin is an employee of record label Just Music where he handles the digital side of the business. He approached the head of the label, Karl Anderson, with a demo of his work and was offered a record deal.
Collected Memories
Carlin produced the band’s debut album, Collected Memories, with Darryl Torr from Harris Tweed. The album was released on May 5, 2008. Nils van der Linden of Iafrica.com described the album as “the kind of slick but dark electro rock you’d expect a fan of New Order and Joy Division to make”.“The Knife” was chosen as the album’s first single, and Carlin enlisted South African cinematographer Rob Malpage and producer Warwick Allan to make the music video. Warwick had a concept for the video, but had not heard the song; they soon got together and adapted the concept to suit the song. The Knife was #1 for 3 weeks on the Hi5@5 on 5FM and was also #1 for 5 weeks on the PUKFM charts.[citation needed] It went to #1 on other South African campus stations. The video was #1 for a couple of weeks on the MK Top10 music videos in South Africa. The release of the album and the national success of “The Knife” meant the band were “causing quite a stir” according to Music Industry Online.
At this point, Carlin needed to find additional members in order to enable the band to perform live. Though he was reluctant to assemble a touring group,1 he recruited Alan Shenton (guitar), Andrew Maskell (bass), Rob Davidson (keyboards) and Darren Leader (drums). “Arm Yourself”, the second single from Collected Memories, as well as its music video (again directed by Allan) was released in August 2008. The third single released by Z & G is the hit “Oxymoron” and in January 2009 they released “Running Faster”