The format was duos on Fridays, trios on Saturdays and solos on Sundays. After Oppiestoep I, which was something of a production with full sound-rig, engineer and lights, the idea was to keep the music lowkey and background. Not cocktail, not at all. A space for original Cape Town expression. Languid and almost laissez-faire, laid back sunsets on the stoep. It's a format that worked well. 

The shows were recorded onto minidisk, very basic. There was no sound engineer, although the hotel invested in a good sound rig which they setup each show. So the recording was hit and miss. Sometimes great, sometimes not, and sometimes nothing at all. What's interesting doing it this way is to see where all the elements aligned to create a good recording.

Contracts were signed with each artist regarding the recordings. Artists own the recordings outright. Some chose not to let us use any of them as samples online or for a promotional CD, as the quality of recordings was sometimes not good enough. Some still were simply unwilling to be recorded. Interestingly, those turned out to be the gigs where the musicians performed cover versions. 

Follow the links on the left hand side for a review of each show, and, as far as we were able to get fair recordings, a sample from the session.

SOUND SAMPLE NOTE:
all samples are low-res MP3 samples, between 1 minute and 2 minutes. To listen using Internet Explorer, right click and save target as. In Firefox, simply click and should load directly in the browser.