/ 1 April 2010

Kaapstad slaapstad

Plagued by self-doubt and insecurity, it becomes quite clear while chatting to Riana Wiechers about her musical alter ego, Mavis Vermaak, that we are lucky to have her debut EP at all.

Lucky indeed for the five tracks that make up Wiechers’ new record, which is a superb collection of spoken-word pieces backed by some fitting minimalist grooves.

Whether it’s the Buckfever Undergroundesque KaapstadSlaapstad or the electro gem Still, it’s clear that Wiechers is a welcome new voice on the Afrikaans alternative scene.

“It started six or seven years ago,” says Wiechers. “I started to have this compulsion to sing despite the fact that I didn’t consider myself a very musical person.”

Althogh Wiechers took some tentative steps in the first four years they never really amounted to much.

“I discovered very late in life that what I always thought was wrong with me was that I was an artist,” says Wiechers. “Therapy has helped,” she says, joking.

So when she finally bunkered down in Kak Praat Studios, which turned out to be the bedroom of producer Juan Penguin, the results surprised her.

“He said come over and bring some lyrics and if I like what you are doing I’ll work with you and if I don’t like what you’re doing I’ll still work with you, but its gonna cost you,” says Wiechers, laughing about it now. “I had no money so [it’s] lucky he liked it.”

This was the start of a two-year process, in which Wiechers and Penguin began to record her poetry and prose to some subtle backing.

“It was so weird in that bedroom, it was like something took over me and when I came out and listened to it, I didn’t even recognise myself,” says Wiechers.

The results are astounding and I couldn’t help but wonder whether the seductive, understated charm of her EP has as much to do with her insecurities as it does with her intimate words.

When listening to the record it feels as though you are intruding on Wiechers’ world, while she is pouring her heart out to an empty room; her deeply personal lyrics are whispers that you were perhaps not meant to hear.

An example is the track 16 Februarie 2007, in which Wiechers sings about a family pilgrimage to an old farm to spread the ashes of her grandfather under a tree.

The chorus is a poem written by her grandfather, Tom Boshoff, which her aunt had discovered when going through his belongings.
While listening to her thoughts on such a personal moment, I couldn’t help but think of Portishead’s media-shy front woman, Beth Gibbons, whose lyrics also feel like a window into a deeply personal world, one that she is uncomfortable talking about with journalists.

It is quite clear, however, that Penguin managed to create the right environment for Wiechers to share her writing with the world.
“We recorded a lot more, but it came to that point where we could have continued working on it forever, so we just decided to select five songs that we were happy with and put them out,” she says.

And why the use of the alter ego?

“Mavis Vermaak is my grandmother’s maiden name,” says Wiechers. “I had these three female friends and one night we got really pissed together and we started talking about our grandmas and then we started calling each other by our grandmother’s names.”

So what now? Is Mavis Vermaak a live project too?

“I have never performed live,” says Wiechers. “That would be another step in my overcoming creative insecurity.
“It scares the shit out of me, but I have this feeling that it’s something I must do,” she says.