“Hay Day” – 2007 – Tristan Waterkeyn’s Debut Album

“Hay Day” – 2007

Tristan Waterkeyn’s Debut Album

HAY DAY – CD REVIEW

Mellow, thoughtful and aurally pleasing, Tristan Waterkeyn’s debut album Hay Day is a hammock-style hit waiting to be discovered. Acoustic guitar and jazzy rhythms complement lyrics both darkly humorous and poetic, the songs melded smoothly together by Tristan’s deep, sincere voice.

The 26 year-old singer and songwriter is based in Cape Town, but his young years have seen extensive travels to the various corners of the globe. Adventuring through Europe, the East and Australia, he was exposed to a variety of styles of music, and life experiences which have shaped his music into the mature, carefully crafted art that is Hay Day.

Tristan’s music is the stuff summer sailing holidays are made of; chilled, with an island feel to it.

It’s the stuff you listen to late into the night around a beach bonfire with the people you love. The 12 professionally recorded tracks offer a mix of the melancholy and the more upbeat, making for a balanced album which is easy to listen to from beginning to end.
From the light-hearted “Kathrin”, written on a beach on the coast of Australia for
a traveller with a penchant for dreadlocks, to the cleverly penned “Inner way”-
thoughts on the paradoxical nature of love and how it can bring people together
or break them apart, and the smoothly intriguing “Atmosphere”, the album is a
rich tapestry of music with Tristan gently threading it all together.

With many CDs, you skip over a few songs, only enjoying half of the recordings.
With Hay Day, your finger won’t be hovering over the skip button; it’ll be on
repeat instead. – CD Review by Carey Finn 2007

Credits on the “Hay Day” Album 2007:

THE BRILLIANT MUSICIANS: Adri Raas – backing vocal (Afraid of the dark)
Ben Badenhorst – electric guitar
Howard Butcher – bass dubs, claps & clicks
James Kaye – drums / percusison
Jonno Sweetman – percussion
Kyle Shepherd – keys / piano
Martin Wolfaardt – percussion
Wesley Rustin – bass / fretless bass
Paul Gibbings – double bass
Rayele Goodman – violin
Steve Newman – guitar (To the Hills)
Tony Cox – guitar (Atmosphere)
Tristan Waterkeyn – lead vocals , rhythm guitars

THE RECORD LABEL:

OVERTONE | WWW.OVERTONE.CO.ZA

Overtone is making things happen for South African Music and its Artists. If you are in a band and need help … come check them out. Overtone is the friendly face of the music industry.

THE STUDIOS:

Pre-Production at Overtone Studios, Cape Town.
Initial Recording at Sibebe Studio in Cape Town.
Final Recording and Production completed with Howard Butcher at Eden Multimedia, Knysna

THE ALBUM

All Songs, Music and arrangements by Tristan Waterkeyn
Engineered, Mixed by Tristan Waterkeyn and Howard Butcher
Mastered by Howard Butcher.

The New Biography by Anthony Boyd.

“Hay Day” is the kind of CD I’d want to have accompany me on thousands of kilometres of sailing. It’s a “lie back in your hammock, look at the horizon and let the movement gently rock you” sort of album.

It’s melodies spin themselves from lyrical yarn, the instrumentation’s brightly colourful and it’s all woven closely together by a silky smooth voice. Poetic, ambiguous words and jovial, sometimes theatrical play on instruments are an invitation to delve into layers of meaning. And it’s all taut… a nice taut mainsail to pull you along…

Tristan Waterkeyn’s been around. Born in Tanzania , moved to Kenya , then to Zimbabwe , where he went to high school. He learned to play the guitar to escape the rigid institutionalism of boarding school, and made appearances in Harare for a band called “Substitute Parachute”. After that he spent three years backpacking through Asia and sailing thousands of kilometres (yes, with guitar in tow), before returning home to Africa .

To Cape Town , to be exact, where he studied philosophy and comparative religion at University and soon found a group of people to share his passion for music with. Having finished his degree and having found himself more involved in the live music scene than anything else, Tristan saw a need for a more unified community in South Africa ’s diverse music industry.

He formed “Overtone”, a company dedicated to building up the music industry of South Africa . Overtone provides every South African band and artist with access to its rapidly expanding online community with easy access to the music industry via its directories. For fans and the industry, it offers a monthly gig-guide and newsletter, as well as access to information on different sectors of the industry in South Africa – from bands themselves to live venues, stores, labels and industry news. As a resource for artists, Overtone is to offer all the facilities that they would normally have to source from multiple individual companies. It also offers facilities and help for musicians to record and produce their own albums.

This brings us back to the new album “Hay Day”. It’s taken a considerable amount of effort, time and coordination – a testing of the Overtone system – to arrive at the finished article, and here is Tristan’s (and Overtone’s) seamless debut album.

(Biography and Interview by Anthony Boyd 2007.)